The only absolute certainty is that there is no going back to the way things were pre-pandemic. The old normal is gone, even if there are no definitive indications yet of what the new normal will be. 

Not an easy time, you might think, to be making predictions for the next 12 months. But there is sense to be made in all this uncertainty. Armed with our hard-won talent market intel and on-the-ground observations from our seasoned consultants, we have some valuable insights to share.

Here’s the EWS view on where the talent market is heading in 2024… and what smart recruiters need to do to be prepared.

The global economy in 2024

Macroeconomic forecasting has become something of a fool’s errand in recent years. The world economy has been disrupted by an unprecedented sequence of black swan events, all while the climate emergency makes ever-more-urgent demands for new economic thinking. However, optimism is now coalescing around core factors like growth, inflation and employment. 

Goldman Sachs Research, which predicted the global economy’s outperformance against expectations in 2023, is even more positive about the prospects for 2024. Income growth, cooling inflation, a robust job market, room for Central Banks to reduce interest rates – it’s not for nothing that their report is titled The Hard Part Is Over. 

The OECD predicts more uneven growth but a similar picture around interest rates and continuing low unemployment rates. 

Specifically in the talent space, Recruitics forecasts cooling labour markets, although cautions of a persisting gap between supply and demand. 

So where does this leave recruiters? We’re viewing the answer as a shift from wait-and-see mode to planning mode. Irrespective of the precise trajectory of the market in 2024, it’s highly likely that growth is stabilising and an uptick in investment is on the horizon. 

That gap between supply and demand won’t be closing any time soon. So when the time does come to start hiring again, the successful recruiters will be the best prepared. 

“This isn’t the time to be reactive. We know a fundamental change is coming and there will be a point relatively soon when you will be hiring more than you have been. The best way to be ahead of that is to start early. Invest in talent pipelining, invest in talent mapping. Ultimately, the busier you are now, the better positioned you’ll be when the boom does come.”

Darren Hornigold, EWS Director

Emerging talent trends for 2024

We’re seeing some significant new trends emerging, with other recent trends solidifying, falling back or balancing out. These are converging to reshape the talent landscape for 2024 – and every one of them should be on your strategic radar right now.

1. The end of The Great Resignation? 

As our Global Delivery Leader Ken Craig notes, all signs are that The Great Resignation is itself quietly quitting. 

“Workers quitting or job-hopping spiked in 2021-22 but post-pandemic, this looks to have peaked. Through 2023, we’ve seen ever-stronger emphasis on candidates who haven’t jumped from job to job. And this dampening in demand has also seen wages start to balance out after a period of inflated growth. Things are looking a lot more sustainable on that front now.”

This is one big relief for talent teams, but no reason yet to take your eye off the retention ball. 

Ken cautions that “employees want evidence they’re in a company that wants them long term. Many of our clients are investing heavily in learning & development – both upskilling and reskilling – to design career progression paths to retain top talent. This is a key employer brand pillar and one that vastly improves employee engagement.”

2. The Great Retirement gathers pace

As Strategic Dimensions puts it, “the 2020s is the decade during which the challenge of an ageing population shifts from being tomorrow’s problem to today’s.” Almost half-way through, with the Covid-accelerated rise in workers retiring early, this is a workforce trend that cannot be ignored.

There is vast intellectual capital locked up in all those Baby Boomers, and increasingly Gen X executives, on the verge of retirement. Without a clear view of where to find the next generation of exec-level talent, The Great Retirement will be anything but great for organisational futures.

EWS Director Darren Hornigold proposes a clear strategic solution. “The more people analytics you use, the more you understand the ebb and flow of your workforce and the wider talent market. So you know you’re going to have a 10% loss of ‘grey’ intellectual capital over the next five years. How are you going to manage that effectively without a talent pipeline?” 

3. The Great Reprioritisation: Rise of the selective candidate

We are seeing an intrinsic shift in what candidates are prioritising in their career decision-making. So fundamental is this shift, we’ve coined an entirely new category of candidates. Where we previously demarcated active and passive candidates, we now speak more and more of selective candidates.

These are candidates who are only open to exploring new opportunities if they fit certain criteria, typically around working pattern, culture and non-compensatory benefits. Crucially, even for roles where there’s a good competency fit, if these criteria aren’t met, selective candidates are saying ‘no’ far sooner.

Darren explains: “Traditionally, our model was to target passive candidates. But now we’re having a completely different type of engagement. Candidates can be active for two or three conversations, and then very quickly they’re turned off because it doesn’t quite fit with what they want in their life. For selective candidates, what matters to you is a holistic thing rather than a job title”.

This poses a major new challenge for recruiters, one that will only grow with the rise of the selective candidate. It’s no longer enough to have a big name, an attractive role and a great compensation package. 

As Darren puts it, “now you need to factor in all kinds of intangible variables. Can they work from home? What are their long-term incentives? What are you doing about wellbeing? What’s in the office fridge? Do you have a ping pong table? It’s a different landscape with a far greater need for more nuanced qualification.”

Navigating that landscape, then, requires an equally nuanced mindset. This is partly an employer branding challenge. Ken is finding that “an organisation’s perception in the market is becoming increasingly important, with green and sustainable practices particularly high on candidate agendas. You can no longer rely on the company name. It’s about changing the go-to-market narrative.”

Another crucial mindset shift for talent acquisition teams is from prioritising identification to focusing resources on candidate engagement. Which leads us neatly on to our final trend…

4. The sweet spot between AI and HI

The exponential growth of AI recruitment tools continues apace, particularly in managing job applicants. We’re going to see more and more ChatGPT-written job descriptions, chatbot-answered application questions and interview questions generated by AI tech analysing job descriptions and applications.

Yet with the rise of the selective candidate, the demand for human intelligence at the front end of the recruitment process will become greater than ever. AI tech undoubtedly has the potential to 10x our work in candidate identification. But in the increasingly critical engagement phase, it’s another story altogether, as Darren explains.

“With selective candidates, it’s no longer binary qualification. Say you’re looking for a Marketing Director on the U.S. West Coast with a B2B background, some B2C and 8+ years’ experience. You have three key essentials and there’s a good chance AI will improve our ability to map out that market. What it can’t do is ask the question about the grey areas, the intangibles. It can’t engage on a human level. And unless you’re willing to risk the quality of your candidate experience, that person-to-person element is essential.”

How talent acquisition teams are preparing for 2024

Hiring is going to be back on the agenda in 2024, even if our crystal ball doesn’t allow us to put an exact timeline on it. But when investment starts flowing again and the new war for talent does break out, you’ll win by having put in the groundwork early.  

We know that in-demand skills are already scarce and competition for that talent is only set to rise more sharply. Factor in the advent of the selective candidate and the pressures of the Great Retirement, and the smart money is on the horizon-scanners, not the shoegazers.

As ever, EWS is here to help you take a more strategic view of talent acquisition. We’re experts in talent mapping, so we can apply a laser focus to the talent markets you want to understand. And our pipelining prowess will help you build proactive talent pools, ready to be dipped into when the time is right. 

When that moment comes, you can rely on us to seamlessly search for and engage the best candidates, attending to their deeper priorities as well as their career aspirations and salary expectations. 

With that in mind, perhaps we have one final recommendation for the year ahead. In 2024, choose a talent partner that’s in it for the long term.

“The talent landscape is changing and hiring priorities are in flux. In this market, a true partner is one that can adapt easily to map out the road ahead. They will know your business, your competitors and your market. They’ll understand your culture and the types of people you want to attract. And crucially, they can give you the insights and intel to shape your hiring around your strategy.”

Emma Watson, EWS Managing Director

The post The EWS View: Top Talent Trends For 2024 appeared first on EWS.

1-click applications are a godsend for recruiters and candidates, right?

They give top talent a fast-forward button to your vacancy, meaning you don’t miss out on those stellar candidates too busy being brilliant to complete an entire application form from scratch. Convenience for candidates and a steady flow of engaged applicants into your ATS (not to mention greater resource efficiency) for you.

Another win-win layer of hiring automation. Trebles all round!

Except it isn’t so straightforward. Like so many steps in the march to automated recruiting, 1-click applications present a precarious trade-off between efficiency, employer branding and candidate experience.

It’s a basic tenet of motivation: the easier something becomes, the less commitment it requires and the lower its perceived value.

If you see a job you really want, you’re willing to run through walls to get it. When you’re offered a one-step, no-hassle way to apply, it suddenly feels cheaper, less worthwhile. “Who’s to say,” thinks the applicant, “that an army of unqualified candidates isn’t right now blindly clicking in their application, swamping the process in mediocrity?”

As a qualified candidate, maybe that will work in your favour, maybe not. The one thing you do know is that you’re in an unedifying numbers game for an employer you now respect slightly less.

Even worse, automated hiring turns all of those unqualified 1-click chancers into potential critics. An unsatisfactory response, whether it’s a terse and cursory automated email or their application ending up in the notorious ATS black hole, casts a long shadow over your employer brand.

In other words, you’ve ended up making naysayers of people who should never have been anywhere near your employer brand in the first place. On the bright side, at least you’ve inflated your ATS with the details of a few more irrelevant applicants you’ll never so much as glance at again.

Sarcasm aside, we have genuine concerns about the payoff between process efficiency and reputation management of automated hiring systems like 1-click application. Likewise automated ATS email responses and artificial intelligence in online video interviewing.

Recruitment is an innately human business, probably more so than any other. A candidate’s suitability for a role is ultimately determined by a nuanced set of intangibles: ambition, worldview, accomplishments, confidence, rapport, cultural fit and so on.

Humans simply do not miss these critical factors in the way that automated processes (what Liz Ryan dubbed “inhuman systems of recruitment” in her epic Forbes takedown of recruiting technology) all too easily can. Meanwhile your goodwill as an employer is being eroded every time a candidate rubs up against the blank void in the automated process where human interaction would otherwise be.

This is a long way from saying that technology plays no role in enhancing recruitment. It’s simply to caution that every automated step added to a hiring process diminishes its humanity and increases its fallibility.

Most jobs are worth more than a single click.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below. (And yes, we fully appreciate the irony in the context of this post.)

Image © R.E.M. Automatic For The People, Warner Bros. Records

The post Is Automated Hiring Making It Too Easy for Candidates to Dislike You? appeared first on EWS.

Job descriptions have a simple goal: to focus your talent search on qualified candidates. Traditionally, that means creating an exhaustive list of tasks performed and experience required, in the hopes that unqualified candidates will rule themselves out of contention. And therein lies the problem.

By prioritising tasks and experience over the impact a candidate will make in the role, most job descriptions drastically limit the job they describe. If the goal is to discourage the wrong people from applying, it’s natural to want to be as detailed as possible on what the job involves and who has the skills to do it. But that also increases the odds of a potential star self-deselecting because they don’t match up to every point on the profile.

To put it another way: the job description should be a tool to plan for excellence. Very often ‘hoping for competence’ is the limit of its ambition.

From job description to success profile

Fortunately, there is another way. The success profile gives you and your candidates a better lens through which to view the role in question. In place of dry lists of duties, experiences and qualifications, it defines the job through outputs, achievements and successes.

Many exponents, including recruitment and training guru Lou Adler, call this a ‘performance-based job description’. We think ‘success profile’ says more with less.

Either way, the key is to change the way you see the job you’re describing:

A job isn’t… an inflexible set of actions carried out robotically until further notice.

A job is… a dynamic performance intrinsically bound up in the results it delivers to your company. For example:

• A salesperson’s job isn’t to talk to prospective customers, but to bring more money into the business.
• An engineer’s job isn’t to create technical plans, but to solve problems.
• A recruiter’s job isn’t to sift applications, but to improve quality of hire.

These are broad examples, but any job should be definable by a clear set of objectives, measurable over time to show when someone is succeeding in that role. (Adler’s claim is that “just about every job in the world could be defined this way with 6-8 performance objectives”.)

What job information goes in a success profile?

These performance objectives form the core of the success profile. They could include:

• Expected outcomes – What 6-8 things must a person achieve in the role to be labelled a success after e.g. 6 months or a year?
• Success measures – Quantify them clearly (e.g. ‘Increase product sales by 10% in Year 1’, ‘Improve our Net Promoter Score by +5’ or ‘Migrate us to a new ATS’).
• Growth potential – If the role comes with prospects, include them. Again, be specific. Where could a high performer end up after two years? What heights have previous postholders gone on to?

What candidate requirements go in?

Needless to say, the success profile also reinvents the person spec. It has to: If a job is defined by results not duties, it makes no sense to set out an arbitrary list of requirements for how those results must be achieved. For instance:

• Why does someone need 10+ years’ experience? What if they have four but they’re a really fast learner?
• Is a degree absolutely necessary to answer the question ‘Can I increase turnover by 20% in Year 1?’
• Can a programmer be trained up in one of the six languages you’ve speculatively listed under skills required?

The point is that results can be achieved in unexpected ways. Enlightened employers are ready to be surprised. To avoid the risk of turning away a great candidate who doesn’t tick every last box, you need to distinguish essential requirements from nice-to-haves.

Once you have your essentials, define them in a role-specific way. Don’t fall back on empty phrases like ‘excellent oral and written communication skills’. Tell people what they’ll be doing with them (e.g. emailing customers, providing product demos). Likewise, nail down soft skills such as ‘can-do attitude’. What is it about a person that makes others think they have a can-do attitude? What specific behaviours do they exhibit?

Is it worth changing the habit of a lifetime?

Making a change this fundamental in your hiring process is undeniably hard work but there are persuasive benefits for all concerned.

Candidates love the approach because…

1. It lets them imagine themselves in the job. They get to visualise themselves succeeding, progressing and having an impact in your company, not just performing an assigned set of tasks. This is a way to speak directly to their abilities AND their motivations.
2. It gives them something to get excited about. Every sales job description out there talks about ‘using your people skills and strategic sales outlook to achieve results in a high-pressure environment’. How many put a figure or a timeframe on those results?
3. It opens the job up to new audience groups. Where traditional job descriptions risk disqualifying candidates on superfluous requirements, a success profile lets people decide whether they can do what’s needed with what they have.

Smart employers love the approach because…

1. It prioritises qualified candidates over unqualified ones. Old job descriptions say ‘if this profile doesn’t look like you, this job isn’t for you’. Success profiles say ‘if you can get these results, we’re interested’. It selects in qualified candidates and launches your relationship with them on a positive footing.
2. It’s the choice of diverse employers. The success profile has the potential to widen the candidate pools you source from and the breadth of quality candidates you attract. It opens up the possibility of different paths to the same destination.
3. It’s a useful interview tool. By defining the job in a more meaningful, focused way, the success profile is a better starting point for competency and performance-based interview questioning.
4. It’s easier to update. Future-facing employers review their job descriptions at least annually. The quantifiable nature of a purpose-based role profile makes it easier to identify and change any out-of-date details.

You can probably tell we’re firm believers in the value of switching your thinking to adopt the success profile approach. Indeed, we’re planning a follow-up post contrasting a sample success profile with its job description counterpart.

You can sign up for Talent Unlimited updates to be notified when it goes live.

The post Why Your Job Descriptions Could Be Harming Your Hiring Prospects appeared first on EWS.

If the EWS fairy could grant you one hiring wish, what would it be? To make qualified, pre-screened candidates magically appear before your eyes, ready to fill vital vacancies the moment they arise?

Your wish is our command, with no magic wand required. If you can reset your recruiting mindset from whack-a-mole vacancy plugging to proactive planning and relationship building, the benefits of talent pipelining are yours to reap for years to come.

There’s a reason why more and more top global employers are adopting a talent pipelining strategy for their mission-critical roles. Actually there are several reasons and we’ll get onto them shortly. But first of all, let’s be completely clear what we’re talking about.

What is talent pipelining?

The principle of talent pipelines is simple. If you know where your company’s key talent gaps are, it’s a good idea to plan in advance how you fill them, rather than merely responding as and when they arise.

First you identify and reach out to quality passive candidates in your chosen market. You’re not contacting them about a specific job, but forging a relationship, bringing them into your world and immersing them in your uniquely compelling company story.

The aim is to create a talent pool overflowing with these passive but interested candidates. You keep in contact regularly, establishing culture fit, updating them on your plans and staying in touch with theirs. Then, when the right opportunity comes along, your dream candidates are warmed up and ready to dive in – making the process smoother and cleaner for everyone involved.

What are the benefits?

So now, back to the reasons why talent pipelining done well is the path to recruiting nirvana. There are four main virtues.

1. Talent pipelining cuts time to hire

Your talent pipeline is a fast track to relevant, pre-screened warm leads for your most important roles. If it takes some time and resources to set up in the first place, the outlay is more than made up for by your ability to move fast when it matters most to your organisation. If you need any help, we’re here to get things up and running.

2. Talent pipelining cuts cost per hire

You stand to save significant amounts of money in two ways. First, this is a direct sourcing initiative with massive potential to reduce your reliance on expensive agencies. Second, by selecting from a familiar, pre-engaged talent pool, you reduce the chances of making bad hires and incurring all the damaging costs that come with them.

3. Talent pipelining improves candidate quality

When you’re the one making the approach, you’re the one controlling the quality of candidates in your pipeline. The effect is compounded by the argument that passive candidates are better candidates. You’re talking to people not actively looking to move on from their current job, which shows commitment, loyalty and integrity. And when the time does come to make a decision on your future opportunity, they’re more likely to say yes or no for the right reasons.

4. Talent pipelining makes recruitment a strategic driver

The best talent teams are interested in so much more than bums on seats. Strategic talent planning lets you future-proof your organisation by making smart preparations to overcome hiring challenges in the years ahead. Talent pipelining is the centrepiece of any robust talent strategy, as many of our clients will tell you…

We’ve been working with a Tier 1 bank for several years to continually build market knowledge and connections for future vacancies. Today, a significant proportion of the successful approaches we make are to candidates mapped up to three years ago.

We’ve helped another client, a global tech corporation, to build flourishing talent pipelines across sales, account management and systems engineering, throughout EMEA and LatAm. The ability to stockpile talent for hard-to-fill roles in challenging markets is clearly another big plus for talent pipelining.

Planning through turmoil

Crucially, if ever there was a time to start building your talent pipeline, this is it.

We live in an age of global uncertainty that shows no imminent sign of stabilising. For some the response is to cling on and hope to ride out the storm. Others see the opportunity to put in place systems and strategies to prepare for the future business landscape, whatever it looks like.

A well-stocked and nourished talent pool lets organisations plan for their potential hiring needs in any number of possible futures.

Another way of putting it: the only future you really need worry about is the one in which you never get round to developing your talent pipeline.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post Talent Pipelining 101: What You Need to Know and Why You Need to Know it Now appeared first on EWS.

This year’s LinkedIn Global Recruiting Trends report is a few months old now, but it’s still a rich mine of talking points. Among the slew of stats are a few we keep coming back to with increasingly furrowed brows.

They’re to do with employer branding; more specifically the gap between talent leaders’ stated beliefs about employer branding and their financial commitment to it.

The first concerns the perceived value of employer branding (EB) in talent attraction:

This is supported by a ‘fantasy budget wishlist’ figure:

Then we get to the reality of the situation:

For us, the size of this gap is startling and puzzling in equal measure. How can there be so much strategic goodwill towards something so financially undervalued? Why isn’t more time and money allocated by hiring teams to putting the employer brand at the heart of their strategies?

Ultimately, do employers actually believe in their employer brand in the way they say they do?

Inevitably, the answers to these questions come with some caveats and considerations. Here are the main ones.

The shifting landscape of employer branding

The roots of the employer brand may lie in recruitment but it has grown branches into other areas of HR, plus marketing and corporate comms. Today, it is its very own fiefdom in many large organisations. EB has changed course and now drains from different fiscal pools. And while this doesn’t explain away the yawning chasm between perceived value and actual spending, it may account for some diminution of EB within recruiting budgets.

An HR hot potato

There is another consequence of EB’s shape-shifting intangibility. In effect, it’s hard to make a compelling and consistent business case for a strategic tool that somehow still seems to evade definition to the point where nobody in the organisation is entirely sure who’s responsible for it. Resources are tight as it is. Why would you allocate and fight for more budget now for something that may not be in your purview this time next year?

Resources on the rack

That brings us neatly onto another critical factor. The LinkedIn report confirmed what most recruiters already knew: resources are stretched. Hiring volumes are growing but hiring teams aren’t. You have to do more with what you have to put bums on seats. And what you have are tried-and-trusted tactical tools: job boards, agencies, recruiting tech and, if you’re smart, employee referral.

An immeasurable device

When you’re under pressure to deliver results, it’s natural to fall back on what you know. Just as importantly, you need to be able to prove you’re delivering those results. And measurement is another area where employer branding has historically struggled to assert itself.

So where does all of this chin-stroking leave employer branding as a recruiting tool right now? Compromised, certainly. But are all of these circumstantial factors legitimate reasons for talent leaders’ lip-service-and-long-grass approach to their own employer brands?

‘Probably not,’ is the honest answer. EB experts such as Dr John Sullivan are exasperated by the myth that employer branding is beyond measurement, proposing a swath of metrics to gauge EB strength and impact, from productivity gains to quality of hire assessment. And if you can measure it, you can build a business case for it.

Similarly, many commentators think that the cost barrier is a red herring. Here’s recruitment strategist Mark Stephens:

“I find [it] very interesting that there is a perceived high/prohibitive cost to employer branding in relation to recruitment. After all, we are not talking about trying to establish a global corporate brand […] Your company brand is quite simply what your current and past employees say about you. If you don’t know, then ask them.”

It’s a simplified view pointing to a simple truth. There are EB activities that recruiters can undertake without busting their budget, whether by themselves or in league with other employer branding stakeholders. The task of exploring and mapping out what defines and distinguishes you as an employer, then putting that at the heart of your talent acquisition… Isn’t that what every recruiter worth their salt should be doing anyway?

It’s ultimately a question of will. If talent leaders really want employer branding at the heart of their hiring strategies, they have to make the case from the ground up. If they want more budget to invest in EB, first they must give business leaders something to invest in.

The answer is there. But ironically the question remains the same: Do employers care enough about their employer brand?

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

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Earlier this year, we wrote a post outlining the problems with traditional job descriptions and offering an alternative: the success profile.

We finished the post with a promise to share a sample success profile with its job description counterpart. And that’s precisely what we’re doing here, using a job that will be familiar to one or two readers.

Here are our before-and-after versions – traditional job description vs. success profile – for a Recruiting Manager.

The acid test for recruiters: which version would you apply for first? (Your head may be turned even more by this super-concentrated Recruiting Manager’s success profile by NPR, the US public radio network. Not an ounce of fat on it but it still manages to say more about the role than an old-fashioned job description 5x as long.)

We hope you’re inspired to add the success profile to your recruiter’s toolkit. It’s a shift in perspective that benefits us all.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post Goodbye Job Description. Hello Success Profile. appeared first on EWS.

Skill shortages are a common resourcing challenge in most sectors. We’re speaking to more and more companies struggling to find quality hires to fill critical roles, particularly technical and specialist ones.

Recently we’ve been working with several pharmaceutical companies at a loss to recruit the right calibre of engineers and R&D professionals within their operating markets. The big reason is endemic and deep-rooted: a dwindling pipeline of STEM students leading to intense competition for scarce talent, both from within pharma and beyond. The problem is compounded for this specific skillset by a prevailing risk-aversion: in Western workforces at least, rampant career-building is typically not in the engineering mindset.

However, good news is at hand. According to a recent survey of global workers, it appears the talent is out there (and better still, keen to hear from you). If you want to fill those troublesome positions, the onus is on you to extend your horizons.

Earlier this year, Boston Consulting Group and Recruit Works Institute jointly published a report into job seeker trends, entitled Increasing Global Mobility. One of its key findings was that among 13,000+ people surveyed in 13 countries, 64% expressed an interest in finding work in a different country. What’s more, this desire is widespread: only in Japan did more than half of respondents indicate zero interest in moving countries now or in the future.

These are revealing findings for sectors like pharma, which rely so heavily on highly specialised skills concentrated in pockets globally. The implication is that, if you pick the right markets and nail your local hiring processes, you can plug skills gaps from previously unexpected sources.

That’s not to say hiring cross-border is easy. There are myriad administrative and legislative hurdles to overcome, not to mention cultural holes in the road to swerve, from language barriers to culture shock to repatriation issues.

Meanwhile, the country you’re hiring into is every bit as important as the market you’re exploring. If you want a beautifully detailed way to research migration flows between different countries and regions, we have this treat for you. Wherever in the world you search, it will help your cause if your host country is in the upper reaches of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index.

Those are some of the pitfalls facing cross-border recruiters. But as with so much in our industry, bold minds and fresh thinking are needed to revive stagnant waters. Bemoaning skills shortages is out of step with our globalised talent market, two-thirds of which is interested in pursuing their career overseas.

Many companies in specialised sectors such as pharma are already seizing the opportunities presented by this new fluidity in the world of work. The question for all recruiters in these sectors is: are your competitors among them?

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post Is Your Talent Shortage Actually Talent Shortsightedness? appeared first on EWS.

There is, quite simply, no getting away from the statistics on this one. Time and again, employee referral has been shown to be the undisputed standout source of quality hires.

Here it is in LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends 2017 report, leapfrogging job boards and social networks to take the top spot in a survey of nearly 4,000 talent decision makers.

And the trend stretches back at least as far as 2010, when Career Builder’s Referral Madness whitepaper found 88% of employers naming employee referrals their number one source of quality hires.

So why do employee referrals still seem like the unloved branch of the talent acquisition family?

Why does referral only account for 9% of recruiting budgets? And how did a 2015 ICIMS report find that over 1 in 3 employers have no documented employee referral process in place at all?

Evidently it’s time to once again make the indisputably compelling case for employee referrals. Here are our top 5 reasons to put more effort and resources into making your people your hiring ambassadors.

1. Referred hires are happy hires

People don’t recommend things they don’t like to their friends. This truth goes to the core of why referrals are so effective.

Referred hires come to you pre-loaded with a positive mindset about the company – one that lasts beyond their hiring date. They’re apt to onboard more smoothly, having joined you pre-equipped with a workplace buddy. And according to the aforementioned ICIMS poll, 9 out of 10 referred employees are satisfied in both their role and the company culture.

2. Referred hires are loyal hires

All the evidence shows that referred hires stay longer. One Jobvite study put two-year retention rates for referred employees at 45%, compared to 20% from job boards.

Meanwhile the ICIMS survey found 56% of referred hires staying for 5 years, with job satisfaction increasing year-on-year in that time.

3. Candidates trust referrals

Here’s another metric where referrals come out top. ICIMS found 76% of job seekers rating employee referrals as a very or extremely important research tool – far higher than any other resource. This should come as no surprise. As Matt Charney puts it:

“Referrals are, essentially, an employer net promoter score – effectively, it’s that Glassdoor question of ‘would you recommend this as a place for your friends and family to work?’”

In other words, an employee referral the most powerful reputational endorsement you could ask for (and all while your employee is doing your pre-screening for you. Handy.).

4. Referrals save you time

No job search or company research. No cold application to prepare, submit and be sifted. It makes perfect sense that referred candidates would reach you quicker. And so it proves. Jobvite found that on average, a referred applicant joins their new employer after 29 days, compared to 39 days for job board joiners and 55 days for career site candidates.

5. Referrals save you money

Bersin by Deloitte put the average US cost-per-hire at $4,000 in 2015. Set against this, even a hefty £3,000 bonus for each successful referral is a significant saving. When you factor in the lower turnover rates that referred hires bring, referrals start to look every bit as attractive financially as they are from a quality of hire perspective.

Conclusion

So how’s your employee referral programme looking? If you’re still one of the 37%, hopefully this article has given you some serious pause for thought. And if your programme still hovers somewhere round the 9%-of-budget priority mark, maybe now really is the time to look again at this most underrated of talent sources.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post Are You Taking Employee Referral Seriously Yet? appeared first on EWS.

Could video CVs do more of the sift-and-sort work up front? To date, you may struggle to find a comprehensive answer: the scales of online opinion tip heavily towards candidates and the benefits they gain from submitting a video resume.

Whether video CVs are a good thing for employers is a topic less explored. Or rather, was a topic less explored.

Here’s our take on the pluses and minuses of video compared to written CVs, in the context of 4 key candidate screening issues: time, transparency, relevance and insight.

1. Do video CVs save time?

Yes if…

• You’re reviewing a small number of applications or a pre-screened list of candidates
• You want the initial application stage to prune hard
• You want to see specific skills/attributes in action (you can request to see them in the video and make an immediate call)

No if…

• You’re anticipating mass applications
• Your ATS is geared up to screen written CVs (and does it well!)
• You’re receiving resumes in different formats

2. Do video CVs offer greater transparency?

Yes if…

• You’re looking for specific soft skills (e.g. planning or presenting)
• Traits like confidence, credibility and impact are important in the role

No if…

• Spontaneity/improvisation/adaptability are key traits for your role
• You’re receiving resumes in different formats (it’s as bewildering as it is time-consuming!)

3. Are video CVs right for the role?

Could be if…

• Personal interactions are a key requirement (e.g. sales)
• It’s a role with a creative focus (e.g. marketing)
• It’s a digital/social media role

Maybe not if…

• Deep specialist/technical knowledge is the core requirement
• Easy communication skills aren’t specifically relevant (you may end up favouring more charismatic candidates over better qualified ones)

4. Do video CVs give better insight?

Yes if…

• You’re recruiting on personality
• Culture fit is an important factor

No if…

• There are any concerns about unconscious bias compromising equal-opportunity selection

Conclusion

Video CVs are certainly not a screening panacea for recruiters. Their usefulness depends ultimately on the role you’re recruiting for, your hiring priorities and the structure of your selection process.

Yet as candidates become more clued up on your ATS and how it sifts their CV, alternative application formats are definitely worth considering. We hope this post has helped you decide whether video is one of them.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post Are Video CVs a Good Thing for Employers? appeared first on EWS.

Why now? Because in today’s candidate-driven market, those in demand are making informed choices between multiple offers. So when you see the thought, effort and innovation some employers put into their candidate experience, you’ll know where you might need to improve for your offer to be the chosen one. (Unless you work at one of the companies below, in which case: keep it up!)

We’ve found big-name employers across sectors raising the bar at different stages of the candidate journey, plus one tech giant that hit upon a unique way to revamp a failing process.

Here’s what you’re up against:

1. T-Mobile: Winning at the attraction/research stage

In this instance, T is for transparency. T-Mobile’s careers site is a crystal-clear window into the company’s employer brand, hiring process and individual vacancies. As well as displaying Glassdoor reviews, each role page tells candidates how long the vacancy has been open and how many people have so far applied. Elsewhere on the site, infographics and videos explain the hiring process to the nth degree.

The result? Candidates approach their application 100% informed and enthused about T-Mobile, without hesitation or reservations. They’re several steps closer to the company before they’ve even filled in the first application field.

2. AT&T: Winning at the application stage

That last point leads us neatly to AT&T. The telecoms giant had serious issues with its applications. They took too long and applicants disliked the process so much that over 70% of mobile applicants gave up before the end.

AT&T’s solution was bold, beautifully simple and devastatingly effective. Cutting the number of application fields from 75 to 31 resulted in an overall completion rate of 79%, with mobile completions leaping from below 30% to 65%. Based on a cost per application of $6.50, AT&T estimates that this one slick move saved them $1m in a single year.

3. Hootsuite: Winning at the screening stage

Rejection is the part of the process that hurts candidates the most, but arguably the one many employers are least engaged in. Not so Hootsuite, exemplar of our earlier candidate experience post.

Rejection is the part of Hootsuite process we loved the most. As they put it, “how a company handles that delicate situation says a lot about their character… We are dedicated to ensuring applicants who do not move forward get as much resource towards getting a positive experience as the applicants who do.”

How? By revamping their rejection emails to let candidates down gently, invite them to keep in touch and provide a curated suite of job search resources. Engagement at its thoughtful, meaningful best.

4. Humana: Winning at interviewing and onboarding

You’d expect a major U.S. health and wellbeing company to be people-focused. Two key elements of Humana’s candidate experience certainly are.

First, adopting video and automated telephone interviews has aided candidates as much as recruiters. Given time to plan and record responses at their leisure, applicants are far more likely to rate the interview experience as positive. Better still, the system’s efficiency means applicants learn their fate significantly faster. Without even being in the same room as an interviewer, candidates are more engaged in the process.

Meanwhile, as an active recruiter from the U.S. military, Humana goes to great lengths to help veterans transition to corporate life. Innovative onboarding initiatives include relocation concierge services, setting up accommodation for new hires ahead of their start date.

5. Airbnb: Winning at candidate perspective

Last but not least, when Airbnb realised the chasm between its growth trajectory and arcane hiring practices, the company came up with a leftfield way to reinvent its candidate journey. The recruiting team storyboarded the experience end to end, on a wall, with post-its, to earn deeper insights into candidates’ needs, motivations and pain points at each stage.

As people who know a thing or two about gaining richer insights from delving deeper, we couldn’t help but love this slice of fresh thinking.

Conclusion

No employer serious about hiring great talent can afford to ignore the value of candidate experience. Fortunately, few do. But there are some companies taking candidate engagement to another level and reaping the rewards for doing so. We hope these stories help inspire you to join their ranks.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

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