As the current year comes to a close, talent acquisition and recruitment teams are planning their strategies for the next 12 months. During this time, hiring teams and HR leaders have to tackle many tasks, including:

• Resolving issues with their recruiting and hiring processes
• Revisiting brand messaging and language in job descriptions
• Revamping their approach to building a diverse workforce
• Reconsidering what the ideal candidate profile looks like
• Reassessing their sourcing and recruitment marketing efforts

Creating a concrete action plan to improve your recruiting process and hiring results is a big, end-of-year priority. But, it’s just as vital for your business to stay on top of the latest talent acquisition trends that will impact your recruitment approach in the year ahead.

Here are five talent acquisition trends you and your leaders should know for 2024.

1) Heightened focus on data-driven recruiting and hiring strategies

• Embracing real-time analytics will empower hiring teams to work smarter and faster.

Today’s top HR leaders ensure their recruiters and hiring managers embrace a data-driven approach with technology that enables them to execute results-focused recruiting strategies.

The Employ 2023 Recruiter Nation Report found more HR decision-makers intend to follow suit in 2024. Roughly one-quarter (24%) of HR leaders will invest in analytics and reporting for their hiring teams to help them act on data tied to their recruiting speed and efficiency.

Real-time data that shows candidate status and reveals progress on core recruiting metrics, including time to fill, sourcing effectiveness, and offer acceptance, provides hiring teams with actionable insights they can use to improve their work.

Aptitude Research Founder Madeline Laurano recently noted employers must “harness the power of data and insights to chart the right course forward” for their hiring strategies.

Bottom line: Employers that don’t develop data-driven recruiting strategies in 2024 will struggle with hiring top talent, compared to companies that take advantage of analytics.

2) Optimized approach to candidate engagement and conversion

• Building relationships with candidates will be a competitive differentiator for employers.

Whether you’re emailing active job seekers who recently applied for open roles or messaging passive candidates through cold outreach on LinkedIn, you must communicate with these potential hires in a personalized manner to provide a stellar candidate experience.

In 2024, hiring teams will evaluate their talent engagement tactics and overall candidate relationship management strategy to ensure they interact with job seekers in a human way.

The Employ Recruiter Nation Report found 32% of talent teams will also adopt new candidate engagement scoring frameworks that use artificial intelligence. This is intended to help them better learn which nurture messaging resonates with job seekers.

Emailing and texting candidates to update them on their status within the hiring process is essential. Leading recruiting platforms offer automation capabilities that enable hiring teams to put most of these manual tasks on auto-pilot.

Through templated emails, recruiters can personalize messages to each job seeker in their pipeline.

It is up to human resources leaders, however, to ensure their teams are empowered to use purpose-built recruitment software, investing in technology that addresses their hiring complexity and eliminates inefficiencies tied to manual recruiting tasks.

Just remember: The best candidate engagement strategies balance creativity and persistence. Test and optimize your approach regularly using analytics to continually improve key nurture-related metrics, like the open and reply rates for your emails and text messages.

3) Greater emphasis on internal mobility and employee retention

• Businesses that prioritize career mobility will better retain top talent in the coming year.

The Recruiter Nation Report found 39% of employers will focus heavily on internal mobility in 2024.

This finding shows HR decision-makers recognize that, in a highly competitive job market, it is difficult to hire highly qualified candidates, so they must focus on retaining their existing employees.

Look for more organizations to offer career pathing for employees to prevent them from leaving the company and allow them to move into roles that challenge them and provide new learning opportunities.

This approach not only helps retain employees long term, but also alleviates the pressure on hiring teams. “Businesses need new skills at a rate faster than I’ve ever seen before, which means they need to help their employees evolve via upskilling and internal mobility,” LinkedIn VP of Talent Jennifer Shappley said in the company’s latest Global Talent Trends report.

Whether it’s providing stipends for certifications, offering mentorship programs or conducting career development training, leaders must offer employees the chance to grow their skill sets and realize their career paths within the organization to boost retention.

While sourcing external talent through job boards, social media, and other channels will remain critical to the success of any talent acquisition strategy, prioritizing internal mobility must become a major focus area in 2024.

4) Increased reliance on engagement programs to improve company culture

• Human resources will develop more dedicated employee engagement initiatives.

Many companies shifted to a hybrid workforce or entirely remote-work model in recent years. During this transition, many business leaders have evaluated the level of employee engagement for in-office and remote employees.

In 2024, creating a strong culture will be less about making the office a fun environment and more about ensuring employees — whether remote, hybrid, or in-office — feel seen and heard by colleagues and managers, know the value of their work to the business, and are set up to succeed.

To improve their diversity hiring, the Employ Recruiter Nation Report found employers plan to:

• Showcase their DEI commitment on their career site (44%)
• Write more inclusive job descriptions for job postings (38%)
• Use more diverse interview panels in their hiring efforts (27%)

Along with other recruiting and hiring process changes, these efforts by HR decision-makers and their hiring teams are intended better attract and hire more individuals from underrepresented groups and build a diverse workforce and culture in 2024 and beyond.

5) More efforts to improve employee well-being and work-life balance

• Employee wellness will be a big focus for organizations in 2024, driven by HR leaders.

Workforce burnout and fatigue are prevalent within companies of all sizes today.

To make matters worse, employee well-being was a top area business leaders struggled with most amid the pandemic. In 2024, this must be addressed head-on to improve recruitment and retention.

Recruiters have become especially weary. The Employ Recruiter Nation Report found 23% of talent specialists experienced high levels of burnout and concerns over their mental health in 2023.

It’s no surprise a focus on mental health and wellness — and being flexible to employees’ needs regarding well-being — is now vital for all companies to thrive today.

“Encourage open communication, active listening, and a non-judgmental atmosphere where employees feel comfortable sharing their concerns, both personal and professional [in 2024],” HR expert Kara Dennison wrote for Forbes. “When employees have psychological safety within work relationships, it can reduce psychological distress and enhance attitude toward work.”

Schedule a Jobvite demo today. Our team will explain how our advanced, yet easy-to-use enterprise recruitment software can help you hire smarter and faster in 2024 and beyond.

The post 5 Talent Acquisition Trends That Will Define 2024 first appeared on Jobvite.

An employer value proposition (EVP) serves two main purposes for enterprises today:

1. Employers can articulate what makes their organization great to work for. Talent acquisition and human resources teams can build a messaging framework tied to their employer brand strategy. This framework helps company leaders, hiring managers, and recruiters relay the value of joining the business to potential candidates.
2. Active and passive candidates can learn what the employer brings to the table. This often includes EVP messaging around the strong work-life balance they offer employees, the inclusive work environment they’ve carefully built, parental leave policies they’ve implemented, and flexible hybrid and/or remote work models they’ve adopted. 

The key to making the most of your employer value proposition to better attract and retain top talent is using your EVP messaging consistently in job postings and recruitment marketing collateral.

And that requires the right recruiting technology.

Why your leadership must regularly assess and improve your employer value proposition

A recent Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study found 74% of business professionals are approached by recruiters about open roles multiple times annually. Nearly two in five (39%) respondents said they’re contacted monthly by TA specialists regarding job openings.

Many workers carefully evaluate prospective employers when getting these messages. That’s because they need to know what exactly makes an organization better than others. 

“For candidates, choosing a job is a very personal decision,” BCG explained in its report. “It’s the start of an extremely impactful relationship, one that may define several … years of their lives. No wonder candidates are sensitive to ‘moments of truth,’ when employers reveal who they really are.”

Sophisticated companies use hiring downturns to review their employer value proposition. By doing so, they can ensure their EVP resonates with their ideal candidate profile. This, in turn, helps them stand out from the sizable employer crowd.

It also makes it easier for their recruiters to reinforce their talent pools with applicants and sourced candidates who may fit within open roles company-wide.

How your employer value proposition affects your company’s talent attraction and retention efforts

Your HR team likely sends quarterly employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) surveys to your workforce. These polls provide insight into their feelings about their roles and the company at large.

Adding survey questions about what specific changes employees would like to see made across the company can inform leaders of perceived strengths and areas for improvement.

Findings from these additional survey Qs can then be used to make data-backed changes throughout the company and positively impact C-level leaders, managers, and recruiters.

Leaders can boost employee satisfaction and retention

Companies with strong cultures “communicate their vision with authenticity and simplicity,” business expert and author Jason Randall recently wrote for Forbes. They also “show gratitude and appreciation to employees, and not just by writing checks,” he added.

These traits, along with including employees in daily decision-making and factoring in their feedback into team planning, lead to greater retention rates and workforce satisfaction.

More to the point, employee insights provide a company culture enhancement roadmap for them.

These leaders can collaborate to strengthen the work environment. They can also work to give employees more chances to grow internally and help transform the business into a force for good.

Here are some popular advancements that can lead to happier, more productive workers who will likely want to stay at your business long term and a stronger employer value proposition:

• Implementation of new diversity and inclusion initiatives to show a commitment to DEI
• A focus on corporate social responsibility, including philanthropic and charitable work
• The creation of employee resource groups to create a safe and welcoming workplace
• Prioritization of career development programs to provide clear internal mobility paths

This last improvement is especially important. Mercer Workforce Sciences Institute Sr. Partner and Founder Haig Nalbantian told HR Executive that a well-planned career mobility program can improve employee output and sentiment, lower workforce turnover, and lead to a better EVP.

“Employees respond more to what I call ‘career rewards’ — the tangible and intangible value that accrues to employees over time — than to the here and now of pay and benefits,” said Haig. “Strengthening motivation can lead to higher productivity and business performance.”

That’s a win-win for your business and workforce — and a great way to augment your EVP.

Talent acquisition can more effectively attract qualified candidates

A clear employer value proposition can elevate your talent acquisition effectiveness just as much as it can increase your retention efforts. You need two things to properly leverage your EVP throughout the recruiting lifecycle and get more qualified candidates into your pipeline:

1. A well-coordinated employer brand messaging framework
2. An applicant tracking system with candidate relationship management (CRM) capabilities

The top ATS software for large companies acts as a unified, single source of hiring truth. This centralized solution helps recruiters promote your employer brand publicly in a unified, scalable way.

Consider Jobvite.

Talent teams use features like Intelligent Messaging to connect with candidates effortlessly. They also leverage Recruitment Marketing capabilities to set up personalized, automated nurture campaigns to prospects of interest to meet those candidates where they are.

This targeted candidate engagement approach helps Jobvite customers test different EVP messaging over time. These tests can then help them steadily improve funnel conversions. 

“Using smart and integrated recruiting and talent acquisition solutions to nurture relationships will ultimately show candidates that they are valued and appreciated and create a pipeline of talent for current and future hiring needs,” Employ CEO Pete Lamson recently wrote for SmartBrief.

Learn how Jobvite’s leading talent acquisition technology can streamline your recruiting process and help you hire high-quality candidates at scale. Schedule a demo today.

The post How Your Employer Value Proposition Impacts Your Hiring first appeared on Jobvite.

Your enterprise’s overarching business strategy has a lot of moving parts that require close coordination among executives and departmental leaders to plan, execute, and optimize.

The same should go for your organization’s talent strategy:

Of course, it’s never as simple as “We need X role filled by Y date — now, go source some candidates.” The top talent strategies are far more nuanced and sophisticated then that — and will certainly need to be for employers of all kinds to succeed in 2024 and beyond.

The future of talent acquisition — specifically, how companies can develop strategic plans to engage and retain high-performing team members who contribute to critical business goals and growth — was the topic of a recent webinar Employ conducted with HR.com featuring a trio of TA experts.

The talent strategy blueprint for the years ahead: What your execs and talent leaders should know

Planning your talent management strategy for 2024 (and perhaps even the years and ahead)?

Here’s what advice NXTTHing RPO Founder Terry Terhark, Employ Chief Customer Officer Chris Stewart, and Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ) Program Director, Talent Management & Development Christopher Wolff, SHRM-SCP had to offer C-suites in our webinar.

Using labor market data as a reference point for workforce planning

“Having spent close to 30 years in recruiting, I can say this is the most awkward labor market that I’ve ever seen, historically,” said Terry. “Interest rates have continued to go up in 2023, but job postings have stayed relatively high.”

The effect of these conditions? A marked rise in hiring for front-line workers, but uneven employment figures for most other industries, per Terry.

While many employers turn to BLS data and related analyst reports to glean insights into the state of the jobs market and economy at large, only leading employers use this info to inform their own internal workforce planning efforts and talent strategies.

“If there are lots of recruiter openings, that means that we have a very vibrant and robust environment,” said Terry. “And, to the extent those openings come down, that indicates more pressure on the labor markets” and, in turn, a down hiring period for many companies.

All in all, Terry explained the candidate market that’s persisted since the middle of the global pandemic remains in place today and likely will in 2024 and possibly beyond.

With that in mind, it’s vital for employers to remember they’re competing with many other employers in and outside their industry — and should ensure their talent strategy reflects that (e.g., strong employer branding and candidate sourcing and engagement processes) to win and retain talent.

Using leading tech for hiring, onboarding, and developing employees

“By and large, most enterprise and medium-sized companies currently use an ATS,” said Chris.

And with nearly two-thirds of HR decision-makers planning to spend more on TA tech in the years ahead, per Employ research, those without applicant tracking systems are likely to rectify that.

Considering these facets of TA when researching and demoing prospective recruiting tech solutions is “really important to attracting and facilitating that engagement with a candidate and making sure they have the most positive experience possible,” Chris added.

Ultimately, with the right tech — that is, a centralized, intuitive, and advanced ATS deliberately developed for enterprises that integrates with other recruitment tools — large-scale companies can implement more sustainable and scalable recruiting programs.

It’s not just recruiters who benefit from an ATS, Chris noted. For instance, HR can use it to kick off onboarding in a seamless fashion (i.e., by connecting the ATS with their HRIS/HCM software).

Moreover, they can liaise with people managers and use “blended” TA-HR data from the two sets of systems to build learning and development programs that provide existing employees with new skills set and develop and retain them. (Something recruiters undoubtedly want to see, given the considerably effort they put in with hiring managers in their evaluation and selection processes.)

Empowering your hiring team with a leading ATS and RPO services

A highly specific example of an enterprise with a variety of unique hiring needs was provided by Christopher, who noted how PANYNJ needs to hire for many roles year-round.

“Recruitment is really interesting here because we hire all sorts of job functions,” said Christopher. “Everything from skilled trades and customer service, to emergency response and engineers, to architects, project managers, finance professionals, marketing, IT, [and] police officers.”

All while keeping candidate experience and hiring speed, efficiency, and quality top of mind.

“Moving to a best-in-class applicant tracking system, Jobvite, [enabled us] to be able to more seamlessly move our candidates through the process,” said Christopher. This smoother recruitment process ensured job seekers “have a modern and intuitive experience with us,” he added.

“As we matured and evolved our talent acquisition function, we not only leverage [Jobvite], but also [hiring] services … in partnership with NXTThing RPO really served as an extension of our in-house recruiting resources,” per Christopher.

Refining your TA tech stack and talent management processes

As Chris noted, investing in a leading applicant tracking system like Jobvite is an important first step to establishing a highly effective talent strategy that helps both HR and TA perform at a high level.

But, not utilizing your ATS to its full potential and integrating other important tools and systems to the ATS will only lead to lingering inefficiencies for talent teams — and their companies potentially losing out on top talent, due to poor application (no pun intended) of the recruiting platform.

“I frequently talk to customers about finding a solution that really fits 80% of their needs and figuring out what are those two or three [parts of their recruiting and hiring] that require a point solution or add-ons,” said Chris. “Even in today’s general TA tech stack and ecosystem, you talk about openness, integrations, all of those things. There’s still a lot of complexity to that.”

That’s why recruiters, operations personnel, and hiring managers need to regularly relay their tech needs: to ensure they have the requisite tools to further augment their respective roles in their org’s recruiting process and continue to transform their distinct talent strategy for the better.

Learn how Jobvite helps enterprise employers elevate their talent strategy effectiveness and scale their hiring efforts. Take the tour of our applicant tracking system today.

The post Reimagining Your Talent Strategy in 2024 and Beyond first appeared on Jobvite.

For recruiting professionals and HR decision makers, getting a handle on key metrics and understanding where any bottlenecks may exist is essential for improving hiring performance.

Based on data from the 2023 Employ Recruiter Nation Report, below are a few notable benchmark metrics across the recruiting funnel that companies can use to compare to their own talent acquisition efforts, and improve recruiting funnel health, efficiency, and performance.

Applications Per Job

Nearly 7 in 10 talent acquisition professionals report that their current volume of hiring is greater compared to last year. This is supported by Employ’s proprietary database of more than 21,000 customers. During the last 12 months, the average number of applicants has climbed across all company sizes, including enterprise, and small-and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

With higher numbers of applications, the percentage change of applications submitted over the last 12 months is also up, indicating a positive trend for employers.

Time to Fill

Time to fill represents how long it takes a company to fill a job opening, from the date a job requisition is posted until a candidate accepts an offer. Simply, it’s the time it takes to find and hire a new employee.

The average time to fill for companies of all sizes is 47.5 days. While time to hire for most organizations has historically hovered around 40 days, during the last 12 months, this number has been higher. 

Because hiring is a game of speed, it is critical to determine areas where you can reduce time to hire overall, including shortening feedback loops internally and moving candidates quickly through each step of the hiring process.

Breaking it down by company size over the last 12 months, time to fill for SMBs typically is a few days longer than at enterprise companies, at 49 and 46 days, respectively. This makes sense, given that it can be more challenging for growing companies to attract qualified candidates if they have a lesser-known employer brand or lack the right mix of tools to streamline their hiring process. 

Benchmarking time to hire based on industry is also critical for talent teams because it tells them how quickly companies in their own sector are hiring.  Media, manufacturing, and education have experienced the highest times for filling open roles, while healthcare, retail, and professional services, have the lowest time to hire during the latest 12-month period.

Applicant to Interview Ratio

The conversion rate from applicants to scheduled interview is what is known as applicant to interview ratio. Based on Employ data, enterprise companies have a higher number of total applications received compared to SMBs for each interview offered. This is consistent over the last 12 months. 

When looking at the conversion rate from applicants to scheduled interview, enterprise companies have a much lower applicant to interview ratio than SMBs. With considerable competition for open jobs in certain industries, and large numbers of applicants, especially in the technology sector, it can be challenging for recruiters to manage the high volume of applications. In the case of SMB companies, they could be receiving more qualified applicants or fewer applications overall for open roles.

Interview to Offer Ratio

Interview to offer ratio is the number of candidates on average a hiring manager must interview to make an offer. Typically, a strong interview to offer ratio is around 33%.

However, looking at the interview to offer ratio for enterprise versus small-and medium-sized businesses, it is clear that during the last 12 months, Employ customers within the enterprise segment have seen historic highs in this conversion metric, ranging between 70% – 80%. SMBs, however, have seen a much lower interview to offer ratio , which could mean a higher number of quality candidates are given opportunities for interviews or employers want to widen the field when it comes to candidates reaching the interview stage.

Most Valuable Metrics to Track

So, what are the most important or most valuable metrics to track? Almost one-third (31%) of recruiters rank quality of hire as the most valuable metric they use to track recruiting success. This is followed by time to fill (14%) and cost per hire (12%). Diversity of talent pipeline is ranked as the least valuable metric to track recruiting success by one-fourth (25%) of HR decision makers. 

Most Valuable Sources of Hire

One quarter of HR decision makers ranked job boards as their most valuable sourcing channel, followed by internal hires (16%), social media (14%), employee referrals (13%) and their career website (9%).  This gives employers insight into the types of channels and sources that other companies are looking to when it comes to filling open roles in their companies.

When it comes to social channels used for sourcing, 41% of recruiters and talent acquisition professionals report that their company currently uses or plans to use LinkedIn as their primary social channel to find candidates, followed by Facebook (20%), and Twitter/X (10%).

LinkedIn outperforms other social media channels in terms of candidate quality, with more than half (52%) of HR decision makers ranking LinkedIn with the highest quality.

Start Measuring What Matters Most to Your Business

Bringing data together all in one place to see up-to-date recruiting funnel metrics, including sourcing effectiveness, application conversion rates, applicant flow, time to fill, and other key hiring metrics, enables talent acquisition professionals to help their business understand how to improve and drive efficiencies across the recruiting function.

Remember, recruiting is about speed, and knowing how to make faster, smarter decisions is how to stay competitive in an unsteady hiring environment.

Go deeper on recruiting metrics and the latest insights. Download the 2023 Employ Recruiter Nation Report: Moving Forward in Uncertainty.

The post Recruiting Funnel Metrics: Get a Handle in an Unsteady Market first appeared on Jobvite.

Despite the turbulence, recruiting professionals should be encouraged by recent trends. Employ data shows that applications per job are up over the last year across companies of all sizes, and more than half of all recruiters expect their teams to grow in the next year, with nearly two-thirds expecting their recruiting budgets to increase.

A Look at the Current Recruiting Landscape

Navigating recruiting challenges in the current hiring landscape takes grit, resolve, and determination. While more than half (53%) of talent acquisition professionals feel their job is more stressful today than a year ago, this number has actually dropped by more than 10 percentage points from just last year.

Those talent practitioners who indicate a high level of stress today say it’s due to not enough qualified candidates (45%), competition from other employers (35%), more open roles to fill (34%), fewer resources to support hiring (33%), a lack of AI-powered recruiting technologies (30%), and more employees leaving the organization (30%).

For those talent professionals who do not feel their recruiting job is more stressful than it was a year ago (44%), over one-third say it’s because of a stable number of open roles to fill (38%), the ability to meet candidate expectations (37%), the same number or fewer employees are leaving the organization (36%), plenty of qualified candidates (36%), and more recruiters or additional recruiting resources (36%).

Recruiting Challenges

When it comes to the most significant challenges talent teams face today, there is a fairly even split among three primary areas:

• Not enough people to fill open positions (31% in 2023 versus 56% in 2022)
• Competition from other employers (30% in 2023 versus 54% in 2022)
• Not able to compete with salary requirements (25% in 2023 versus 33% in 2022)

However, there are positive trends in this data. The significant drop of more than 20 points in the first two areas means that employers are finding more talented candidates overall and that they are competing more effectively with other employers.

Ian Creamer

Vice President and Global Head of Talent Attraction, Guidewire Software

“There is so much uncertainty in the market. The expectation of hiring managers and leaders is that the tide of layoffs should equal much easier access to talent and that’s not always the case. We hire in the technology space and truly top talent remains as hard to hire as ever. Candidates are still showing up with multiple offers already in hand.”

Opportunities and Shifting Strategies

To deal with the challenges of the current job market, many businesses have shifted their recruiting strategies to impact their hiring process. Nearly 60% of talent acquisition professionals also indicate that because of the tight labor market, they are taking chances on different ways to accelerate time to hire and reach candidates.

This includes making sure the hiring process is faster (42%), increasing salaries for new open jobs (40%), providing remote work and hybrid options (38%), and incorporating AI-powered technologies (34%).

Compared to last year, organizations are now able to be flexible in some areas of recruiting, including taking more time looking for candidates (43%), incorporating AI-powered technologies (43%), focusing on internal mobility (39%), using personal networks (35%), opening new requisitions (32%), posting to paid job boards (30%), and expectations for the number of candidates applying to roles (28%).

Improving the quality of candidates remains essential in the current labor market for recruiters and talent acquisition teams, with almost half indicating it is their top priority (49%). However, compared to last year, this number decreased by 12 points.

For 4 in 10 recruiters, getting more candidates for each open role is a priority, followed by improving the speed of the hiring process (33%), and improving the onboarding process (31%). The current state of talent acquisition can be characterized as highly dynamic and competitive. Talent scarcity and demand continues to favor a candidate’s market, and organizations are working diligently to create employer value propositions that successfully capture application volume.

Leveraging AI-Powered Recruiting Tools

While recruiting automation has empowered companies of all sizes for more than two decades to streamline hiring tasks, increase recruiter productivity, speed time to hire, and reduce cost per hire, AI is newer to talent acquisition. And it has the attention of talent teams. Nearly 1 in 3 (30%) of recruiting professionals cite a lack of AI-powered recruiting technologies as a major stress in their job.

With AI now one of the fastest-growing areas to enhance recruitment technology, talent acquisition professionals have already started adopting its capabilities for more intelligent hiring. In fact, more than 58% of recruiters and HR decision makers already use AI to augment their current recruitment technology tech stack, with 82% percent reporting using AI-powered tools frequently or very frequently.

When it comes to use cases in talent acquisition, teams are leveraging AI for multiple uses across the recruiting lifecycle. Chatbots and intelligent candidate messaging (45%), job recommendations on career sites (41%), email and recruitment marketing content (39%), and screening candidates via automated messages (39%) are the top AI approaches currently leveraged in the hiring process. This is followed by intelligent sourcing (38%), candidate matching (36%), diversity, equity, and inclusion network balancing (37%), and job description recommendations (36%).

Organizations must invest in the right set of AI tools that fit their hiring needs, culture, and values. They must also strike a balance between AI’s ability to streamline recruitment processes and the need for human intervention at crucial stages of the recruitment process. Of the HR decision makers who currently use AI to augment recruiting technology, nearly half (47%) leverage AI-powered recruiting tools with AI functionality built in.

By allowing AI to automate processes and reduce repetitive tasks, recruiters can focus on the activities where they derive the most satisfaction and provide the most value, such as selling the role, negotiations, community building, and personalization. Not only does this improve the recruiter experience, but the candidate experience as well.

Moving Forward with Confidence

While recruiting challenges are apparent, so too is the optimism of the industry. Discover why an overwhelming 86% of HR decision makers are optimistic for the future.

Download the 2023 Employ Recruiter Nation Report: Moving Forward in Uncertainty.

The post Recruiting Challenges and Opportunities in Today’s Labor Market first appeared on Jobvite.

Your enterprise’s definition of “effective” talent acquisition strategies likely differs from other large-scale orgs. The truth, though, is all big businesses run mostly the same recruiting and hiring playbook.

The only real differences between your talent acquisition processes and those of other companies is your company’s unique business model, goals, and hiring needs. That said, there are several tried-and-true recruitment approaches leading enterprises execute today to grow and scale as desired.

8 highly effective talent acquisition strategies

Between the time hiring managers submit a requisition to fill (or backfill) a job opening and a candidate accepts an offer, your talent team has worked tirelessly to identify, engage, and advance top-tier prospects throughout the recruitment funnel. During this time, your recruiters:

• Sourced and nurtured top talent from proven sourcing channels
• Prioritize talent management by leveraging your ATS’s (hopefully advanced and easy-to-use) recruitment database and pipeline management capabilities
• Screened strong-fit candidates whose skills aligned with job postings’ specs
• Introduced those individuals to hiring managers so they can assess leads’ fit
• Moved into the interview process in earnest to answer more questions about their experience and expertise and provide insight into how they’d tackle certain tasks
• Collected candidate feedback from interview panelists to gauge their sentiment
• Liaised with the hiring team to help decide which prospects deserved offers

To augment this process, though, your talent leader and ops manager(s) must do two things:

1. Evaluate your talent acquisition strategies from a high-level vantage point and analyze recruitment and hiring data to offer insights-centric suggestions and adjustments to their recruiters.
2. Learn how other enterprise orgs (those in and out of your industry) succeed with their respective talent acquisition strategies today — and even emulate some of their approaches.

With that in mind, here are eight effective strategies your talent team should try today.

1) Strengthen your employer brand

Reputation and perception impacts attraction. (Talent attraction, that is.) So, create a compelling and distinctive employer brand to act as the foundation of your successful talent acquisition strategy.

As the embodiment of your company’s greatest qualities, mission, and values, your employer brand should resonate with potential candidates and set the tone for their entire candidate experience.

A positive employer brand includes:

• A clear mission and vision statement
• Transparent company culture
• Competitive compensation and benefits packages
• Well-defined career paths and growth opportunities
• Positive employee testimonials and engagement

By highlighting your company culture on your website, social media, job boards, and all other touchpoints with candidates, you will make your org more appealing and recognizable.

2) Improve your job descriptions

Clear, concise, and engaging job descriptions attract the top candidates. Plain and simple.

By focusing on the specific skill sets required for an open role, including relevant terms tied to a position (i.e., ones related to day-to-day duties and desired impact), and showcasing your company culture and benefits, your job postings will be more likely to resonate with the right audience.

Just ensure your job descriptions are:

• Succinct yet specific outlining essential responsibilities and qualifications
• Fully inclusive, meaning they use gender-neutral language and tone only
• Aligned with your company culture and values as well as your brand mission
• Feature semantic keywords for enhanced searchability (job boards, search engines)

Also, look beyond traditional job boards and explore new ways of reaching your target demographic, such as niche job boards, industry forums, and social media. A well-written job description should paint a clear picture of the overall job expectations and offer an enticing look at your company.

3) Streamline your recruitment processes

A seamless hiring process not only enhances the candidate experience but also helps in avoiding losing top candidates to a competitor. Automate repetitive tasks, such as candidate tracking and interview scheduling, to simplify and speed up your recruitment processes.

Your HR department should also evolve its talent acquisition approach through regular communication with department managers, creating an open channel for feedback and adjustments.

That’s why Genuine Parts Company (GPC) brought on Jobvite’s advanced applicant tracking system with candidate relationship management capabilities: to remove as many barriers as possible from the moment someone starts an application, so they don’t click away and convert into a lead.

“If you’re simply maintaining speed, then you’re going to fall way, way behind,” said GPC VP of HR Operations & Compliance Kirk Allan. “The only way to stay competitive is to adopt the most innovative toolkit so you can race ahead at a very fast pace. Jobvite has now given us the ability to do this.”

4) Secure more employee referrals

Your existing employees could be your strongest talent magnets. For many enterprises, leveraging employee referrals has proven to be one of the most effective talent acquisition strategies.

So, encourage members of your workforce to participate in your employee referral program. How? Primarily, by offering financial incentives and keeping the process straightforward and user-friendly.

Offering incentives for referrals (e.g., $500 for any referred candidate who is hired and stays with the business for six months) not only motivates current employees to participate in the hiring process but also helps attract candidates who may not have otherwise considered applying.

The cornerstone of any successful referral program is a best-in-class ATS in which you can store referred leads and allow employees to submit said leads. Jobvite’s referral module helps orgs like ACCO Brands harness their social capital to attract high-quality talent.

5) Develop and nurture your talent pool

Building a strong talent pool — even during “down” periods when hiring is at a standstill — provides a ready source of potential candidates for your talent team to engage.

Constructing said pool is one thing. But, you also must actively engage with leads through nurturing relationships with targeted messages: both personalized (check-ins with particular prospects) and semi-personalized (newsletters about brand updates to “cold” candidates).

By proactively engaging with potential candidates and keeping them informed of job openings and company events, you can create a pipeline of talent ready to be tapped into when needed.

6) Strengthen your candidate experience

The candidate experience is a crucial element to consider in your talent acquisition strategy, ensure your hiring process is streamlined and transparent, providing clear communication and feedback to candidates at every stage.

To steadily enhance the quality of your candidate experience:

• Ensure job postings are clear, well-written, and accurately reflect the position
• Streamline application processes to lessen candidate frustration and drop-off
• Communicate frequently to keep leads apprised during the recruiting process
• Conduct respectful and transparent interviews and allow for feedback afterward

By prioritizing the candidate experience, you will not only attract top talent (and keep other employers from hiring them), but also improve your company’s reputation and increase retention.

7) Tap into your talent analytics

We live in the era of big data. Thus, it’s essential to harness the power of your talent data to discover and engage potential candidates. Make data-driven decisions by using advanced analytics to:

• Understand which sources and nurture approaches are strongest and weakest
• Identify skill set gaps in your current workforce (syncing with your HRIS/HCM)
• Forecast hiring needs, based on projected company growth and attrition
• Uncover info about industry hiring trends (through labor market reports)

Measurement is a vital necessity to the success of any talent acquisition strategies today. Ensure you have the requisite people, processes, and tools to evaluate these facets of your TA efforts.

8) Optimize the application process for mobile

Today’s job candidates live on their phones. So, your recruitment processes should prioritize mobile optimization. That is, you must ensure that your job postings and application process are optimized for mobile devices. Moreover, you must invest in mobile ads on job boards and social media.

By making the candidate’s mobile experience seamless, you will maximize the likelihood that they pursue your job opps. Look no further to learn the importance of a strong mobile experience for job seekers than Jobvite customer Hearth & Home Technologies (HHT):

• Combining Jobvite’s smart recruiting tech and a solid understanding of its talent market, HHT has leveled up their talent acquisition approach.
• By knowing what was important to them and the behaviors of their candidates, they used Jobvite’s Intelligent Messaging, which allowed their recruiting team to send text messages to candidates. This, in turn, has boosted candidate engagement and made interview-scheduling a breeze.
• Response from candidates immediately improved by nearly 50% for HHT after adopting Intelligent Messaging and Jobvite ATS.
• “We needed to be able to get to people where they were on the devices that they were using,” said HHT Director of Talent Acquisition Steve Lewis.

Adopting these talent acquisition strategies can help your org attract and retain top candidates, leading to increased productivity, innovation, and stability.

Want to learn more about how Jobvite can help you thrive in today’s hiring landscape? Schedule a demo to learn how our ATS can strengthen your talent acquisition strategy.

The post 8 Talent Acquisition Strategies to Inspire Your TA Team first appeared on Jobvite.

The demand for skilled professionals continues to surge among employers worldwide today. The harsh reality is businesses that wish to thrive amidst this competition must invest in their people — and that means taking full advantage of their (likely robust) candidate data sets.

It’s no longer enough to simply rely on gut instinct or basic metrics to make informed decisions about the talent to bring onboard and retain at your organization. That’s where talent analytics comes into play.

This need for deeper-level HR/TA data comes as a response to the rise in competition for skilled workers, leaving talent acquisition leaders grappling for insights into the people and skills needed for continued success.

In short, talent analytics is a strategic tool that enables recruiting teams to go beyond simple metrics and gain a deeper understanding of talent in their database. Simply put, those who fail to leverage it have effectively put blinders on to the needs of their organization’s future success.

The power of talent analytics

Improve application completion rates. Better recruitment marketing engagement. More opens of and replies to nurture emails. Savvier and swifter interview processes. Talent analytics empowers enterprise recruiting teams like to operate smarter and faster and improve key facets of their TA efforts such as these.

This includes everything from tracking key performance metrics such as time to fill and cost per hire to analyzing candidate data through onboarding and retention to better understand which sourcing channels and tools are most effective in attracting top talent.

With robust, real-time talent analytics at your disposal (and, ideally, in a single source of truth with other applicant-tracking and candidate relationship management capabilities), you can make more strategic decisions throughout your TA process, resulting in greater success in attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent.

“Data-driven talent acquisition teams are more likely to be successful than organizations hiring blindly,” Society for Human Resource Management Online News Manager & Editor Roy Maurer recently wrote.

Benefits of talent analytics

Talent analytics is one of the most powerful tools available for this purpose, enabling organizations to gain a deeper understanding of their recruitment processes, identify areas for improvement, and make decisions based on solid data.

Here are the primary use cases for talent analytics to revolutionize your organization’s talent acquisition process, resulting in increased success in attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent.

Identify key recruitment metrics

Talent analytics is a transformative tool that empowers companies to easily identify the most critical recruitment metrics. With the ability to track key performance metrics such as time to fill, cost per hire, and quality of hire, talent acquisition leaders can gain a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of their hiring strategies.

For example, which hiring managers are taking longer than necessary to interview candidates, losing weeks of hard work, and which method of contacting candidates yields the best results? However, don’t just grab a list of another company’s goals. What is unique to your business?

While time to fill measures the duration between the job posting and filling the position, it doesn’t consider the quality of the hire. On the other hand, time to hire defines the time from initiation to acceptance of the job offer and indicates how efficient the hiring process is.

All in all, it’s a more accurate metric to measure a recruitment team’s performance.

Improve the candidate experience

Talent analytics represents a transformative tool that can help orgs like yours create a more positive candidate experience during the recruitment process. By analyzing recruiting data, HR pros can gain valuable insights into the most effective ways to attract and retain top-tier talent.

This could include streamlining application processes, improving communication between candidates and recruiters, or even identifying potential organizational cultural improvement areas.

Not only does this enhance the organization’s reputation, but it also helps create a more engaged and committed workforce that can lead to long-term business success.

Retain top talent at your business

Talent analytics enables orgs to understand the drivers of employee engagement and retention.

By analyzing employment data, talent acquisition leaders can identify factors contributing to employee satisfaction and commitment, such as compensation, benefits, work-life balance, and career growth opportunities.

With this information, organizations can take proactive steps to improve these areas, reducing turnover costs and retaining top talent for the long term.

By leveraging talent analytics, organizations can stay ahead of the curve by making data-driven decisions that improve employee satisfaction, increase retention rates, and create a more engaged and committed workforce.

Predict your talent acquisition needs

With the help of data-driven analytics, HR pros can predict future talent needs and proactively create strategies to address recruiting benchmarks, ensuring their business remains competitive in the evolving job market.

By leveraging data-driven analytics, talent acquisition leaders can identify trends in the job market, analyze internal employment data, and make informed decisions about which skills and competencies to prioritize in new hires.

With this information, talent acquisition leaders can create proactive recruitment strategies that address recruiting benchmarks, reducing time to hire and improving the quality of candidates attracted to the organization.

Help keep hiring managers engaged

One area that often gets overlooked is the importance of hiring managers. If they’re not satisfied with the recruitment process, it can hold things up and cause delays in getting new talent on board.

On the other hand, if they’re happy with the quality of the candidates and the speed at which positions are filled, they can be instrumental in making the recruitment process successful.

Get buy-in from your executive team

Understanding your organization’s true business objectives is one thing. Proving you’re correct? A little more challenging without talent analytics.

For example, acceptance rate as a performance metric. Some would argue this metric is crucial because it tells you if your company is effectively attracting and retaining top talent.

With historical data and talent analytics backing you up, you’ll have a clearer idea of why someone might reject an offer from your company. Maybe your compensation package is not competitive enough, or perhaps you need to work on your company’s image and reputation.

With talent analytics, you can identify these patterns and make data-driven decisions to drive meaningful change in your department — and, in the grander scheme of things, for your company at large.

Implementing talent analytics at your organization

In today’s competitive job market, you can’t afford to take a reactive approach to talent analytics implementation. Utilizing talent analytics can help you identify the most effective recruitment strategies, improve the candidate experience, retain top talent, and predict future talent needs.

However, implementing talent analytics is more complex than flipping a switch.

It requires a comprehensive, well-planned approach that considers the unique needs of your organization — and what specific tech that will enable you to make more intelligent hiring decisions.

A few of the essential steps to implementing talent analytics successfully include:

Setting clear objectives

Clearly define your talent acquisition goals and objectives, focusing on your organization’s decided key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your progress. These KPIs could be acceleration through the process, length of retention post-hire, internal vs. external hire, and so on.

Let’s use an example of Number of Qualified Candidates as our KPI and walk through the process of how talent analytics can accelerate and supercharge this one key area of recruitment success:

Collecting and centralizing data

Gather relevant employee data, such as demographics, performance reviews, and skill sets to get a clear picture of success as you define it. Just be sure to remain compliant with data regulations.

To start, you need to collect data on the number of qualified candidates that make it through your recruitment pipeline. This data can come from any source you’re using in your process, whether it’s your applicant tracking system (ATS), Excel spreadsheets, or other data-gathering tools.

Once you’ve collected the data, you need to analyze it to gain insights into your recruitment process.

Analyzing talent analytics dashboards

Utilize analytical tools and techniques to generate insights from the collected data, identifying trends and patterns that influence your KPIs and noting what needs improvement.

By analyzing your acceptance rate over time, you can identify patterns and potential issues, such as a low acceptance rate for a certain job category or location, and adjust your hiring strategy accordingly. For example, you may need to re-evaluate your compensation package or your employer branding efforts to attract top talent.

Taking action on your insights

Use the generated insights to create data-driven strategies to improve your recruitment and retention processes and ultimately achieve your KPIs.

Maybe you notice a low number of qualified candidates. This could point to issues with your sourcing efforts. Perhaps you’re not casting a wide enough net or targeting the right candidate pools.

Or, maybe there’s an issue with screening your candidates, and you’re not identifying the right skills and experience in the applicant pool. This could lead to different sourcing methods and renewed job descriptions and advertisements as tangible changes.

Evaluating your performance

Continuously monitor and evaluate the success of your strategies by analyzing your KPIs and adjusting your approach as needed.

By tracking key performance indicators such as time to fill, candidate experience score, and interview-to-offer ratio, you can gain valuable insights into your recruiting process’s effectiveness. But it’s not enough to analyze these metrics once and forget about them.

The world of talent acquisition is in constant flux, and organizations that adapt their HR strategies with the help of talent analytics will ultimately have a competitive edge.

By incorporating robust, real-time talent analytics into your business, you can ensure that your org makes the best possible people decisions, leading to tremendous talent acquisition success.

Learn how the robust, dynamically updated talent analytics in Evolve, our complete talent acquisition suite for enterprises, can help your TA team make smarter, faster decisions.

The post Talent Analytics: The Key to Unlock Greater TA Success first appeared on Jobvite.

By Nathan K. Low, J.D., Partner, Fisher & Phillips LLP

The information provided here does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information, content, and materials provided here are for general informational purposes only.

Given the current state of economic uncertainty, some employers have considered or turned to a reduction-in-force (RIF) or mass layoffs. During such tumultuous times, it is important that employers carry out any RIF with documented care and precision in order to avoid potential legal pitfalls. 

Preparation is key, as there are many issues that can be triggered if a RIF is implemented haphazardly. An employer should carefully walk through the following steps and considerations.  

Step One: Identify Desired Objectives and Consider Whether Alternative Cost-Saving Measures Exist

Before moving forward with a RIF, it is important to understand and consider other cost-saving alternatives.

For example, an employer may consider a hiring freeze in specific work units or departments or instituting some form of a pre-layoff promotion and transfer freeze. Other temporary cost-saving measures include implementing a temporary furlough, temporarily reducing employees’ hours, or temporarily reducing employees’ pay. However, even these temporary cost saving measures come with their own compliance challenges and risks.

Step Two: Make Initial Logistical Decisions

Once an employer determines that there is no other course of action, the employer should establish a decision-making team to take charge of the RIF process.

Ideally, the team should include a representative from each stakeholder area (e.g., human resources, legal, upper management, key supervisors in affected work units, etc.) and closely coordinate with the employer’s workplace legal counsel.

This team should then make initial decisions about the planned actions and execution, including:

• The necessary scope of the RIF (how many positions to reduce or re-organize)
• Whether voluntary separations will be solicited from current employees
• The operational budget to implement the RIF (legal fees, severance payouts, unemployment insurance)
• The timing of the layoffs and notification to employees

As detailed in the next steps, proper timing is crucial. There are many federal and state-specific laws that place onerous requirements on employers engaging in a RIF.

Step Three: Create a Selection Process for Layoffs

The most scrutinized part of any RIF is the selection process and criteria used to determine which employees will be let go. Some common criteria include:

Employers often use a combination of the above criteria. The key is to develop thoughtful, objective selection criteria that are thoroughly reviewed and vetted by all decision-makers, ideally with the assistance of legal counsel. 

Likewise, skillset or merit-based criteria can create potential liability where an employee’s objective performance is difficult to quantify or compare with other similarly situated employees. This is where objective documentation, such as annual performance reviews, play a significant role.

Before finalizing the list of employees based on objective criteria, an employer should run a statistical discrimination analysis of the selected employees to determine if the numbers suggest discrimination based on any protected category (e.g. gender, race, age, etc.).

If the statistical analysis reveals potential imbalances, then the employer should explore the variances that create the discrepancy and ensure that the non-discriminatory reasons for the statistical variance are documented and well-established. Finally, if the workforce is unionized, then an employer must also examine all bargaining obligations under the operative collective bargaining agreement.

Step Four: Understand the Various Intersecting Laws

A RIF is subject to various federal, state, and local laws, such as the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act and state-specific “mini-WARN” laws. At least 19 states currently have more onerous layoff requirements that employers must adhere to in addition to federal WARN. 

Indeed, state-specific “mini-WARN” laws, such as in states like California, may require advance notice and disclosures to selected employees even where federal WARN may not apply. All these laws will impact the employer’s timing, decision-making, and notification responsibilities to the selected workforce.

Under federal WARN, each selected employee is entitled to a full 60 days’ notice, including part-time employees, employees on temporary layoffs or leave who have a reasonable expectation of recall, and regular full-time employees. Importantly, although part-time employees are not counted to calculate whether federal WARN notice is triggered, part-time employees are entitled to notice.

WARN notices to selected employees must be specific, and the information provided in the notice must be based on the best information available to the employer at the time the notice is provided. This information includes:

• Whether the planned action is expected to be permanent or temporary
• If a plant is being closed, the notice must include a statement to that effect
• The expected date the plant closing or mass layoff will commence, as well as the date that the affected employee will suffer an employment loss (or set forth a 14-day window during which the employee will suffer an employment loss)
• An indication as to whether or not bumping rights exist
• The name and telephone number of a company official who can be reached for further information

Notice to individual employees must be written in clear and specific language that is easily understood by all employees. Along with the above, an employer may decide to include information regarding available dislocated worker assistance or other post-layoff benefits. If the action is temporary, it may be useful to inform employees of the estimated duration.

An employer must deliver the WARN notice so that the selected employees will receive the written notice at least 60 days before being laid off (e.g., first class mail, personal delivery with optional signed receipt). Providing only verbal notice is not enough. While notices should be as accurate as possible, minor errors in the notice or errors that are due to an unforeseeable change in circumstances usually do not violate WARN.

Employers may also face civil penalties of up to $500 per day. However, the amount of liability may be reduced by any wages or benefits paid to employees during the period of violation, and by any “voluntary and unconditional payment” by the employer to the employee that is not required by any legal obligation.

Step Five: Consider Whether Severance Agreements Are Appropriate

In some situations, an employer may decide to provide severance payments to selected employees in exchange for a general release of claims and liability in the form of severance agreements. Severance pay is a payout that goes above and beyond what is owed to an employee for work performed or as final wages owed to that employee.

There are a number of individualized factors that an employer should consider prior to issuing and obtaining signed severance agreements, including but not limited to, focusing on vacation and other PTO benefits earned, retirement/severance overlap, unemployment benefits, state-specific release requirements, and the Older Worker Benefits Protection Act (OWBPA) for those age 40 or older.

Under the OWBPA, if an employer seeks to obtain a release of age discrimination claims from an employee 40 years or older, the employee must be given a minimum period of 45 days to consider the agreement in addition to other disclosure requirements that the employer must provide. All of these issues must be considered and reviewed by an employer prior to drafting and issuing severance payments in exchange for severance agreements.

Step Six: Effective Communication

One of the most difficult parts of a RIF is communicating the news to selected employees as well as the entire workforce.

An employer may also consider whether public announcements are necessary to the local community and general public. How to deliver the message varies on a case-by-case basis, but it is important for leadership and the decision-making team to spend time weighing all the options to determine best practice.

Conclusion

Reduction-in-force is a difficult and emotional process for both employers and employees. In the employment law context, it is important to go through the arduous decision-making process, as detailed above, to better situate the company to defend against the fallout of potential legal claims. Ultimately, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Subscribe to our blog for more informative content on emerging legal changes in HR and talent acquisition, and stay tuned each month for our Employment Law Thought Leadership Series. View Part 1 on Pay Transparency here.

The information provided here does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information, content, and materials provided here are for general informational purposes only.

About the Author

Nathan Low, J.D., is a partner in the Fisher & Phillips LLP San Francisco office. He represents employers in all areas of labor and employment law. His practice focuses on defending employers in wage and hour class and collective actions, PAGA claims, single-plaintiff claims, and retaliation and wrongful termination claims.

Nathan has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America, Ones to Watch (2021 – 2023) and Super Lawyers Rising Starts (2020 – 2022). He is a Member of the Orange County Asian American Bar Association (OCAABA).

While in law school, Nathan was a judicial extern for the Honorable David O. Carter of the United States District Court, Central District of California and the Honorable Gregory Keosian of the California Superior Court. Nathan was an officer and member of UCLA’s Moot Court Honors Program and competed throughout the country. 

He was also an editor for the Los Angeles Public Interest Law Journal. He received his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from the University of California, Berkeley.

The post Reduction-in-Force and Mass Layoffs: Six Steps for Considering Legal Requirements and Strategies When Making the Tough Decisions first appeared on Jobvite.

That’s why smart talent acquisition teams incorporate AI into their everyday processes. With AI tools available today, teams can improve recruiting efficiency, and make better, faster decisions without sacrificing hiring quality or the candidate experience. How? Let’s take a look.

What Is AI (And What Are All Those Acronyms)?

Artificial intelligence is a technology that enables machines to replicate human-like intelligence and behaviors, encompassing areas such as machine learning, natural language processing, and neural networks. AI has the power to learn and evolve, responding to data inputs and building upon that knowledge to continually improve its ability to perform tasks.

However, using AI presents a range of ethical considerations, such as the fairness, accountability, and transparency of its decision-making. Without careful consideration of these ethical implications, using AI could result in unintended consequences, potentially doing more harm than good.

While automation has been one of the precursors to the development of AI technologies, automation lacks the learning and decision-making capabilities of AI and is not subject to the same ethical considerations. Addressing these ethical and technological distinctions is crucial to ensure that AI is integrated effectively and responsibly within organizations. Only then can companies unlock the true potential of AI, empowering machines to work alongside humans to achieve shared goals.

Artificial Intelligence In Recruiting

AI is now one of the fastest-growing areas in technology because it increases the speed of tasks that can be completed while improving the quality of outcomes. Examples of automating mundane tasks include sourcing,  candidate matching, interview scheduling, and smart assessments.

For more detailed descriptions, let’s look at areas that AI encompasses: generative AI, machine learning, natural language processing, optical character recognition, and sentiment analysis.

Generative AI: Draft Compelling Recruiting Content

Generative AI relies on previously created data (images or content already existing online) to create and generate new content. In talent acquisition, it’s often used to draft job descriptions, recruitment ads, employer branding elements, outreach emails, social media posts, and more.

ChatGPT is a popular form of generative AI recently introduced that has already significantly impacted recruiting. However, this technology comes with a stern warning from most industry leaders: “Do not enter proprietary information into ChatGPT.”

Although ChatGPT has a reputation for pulling analytic insights from your confidential data, open AI means that information is now available for anyone using ChatGPT. Generative AI learns and retains anything and everything entered into the program, so beware of its power and presence.

Machine Learning: Predict Patterns and Make Time-Saving Recommendations

With machine learning (ML), computer systems use algorithms and statistical models to perform a specific task without explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead. Some refer to this as conversational AI or “generative AI with guard rails.”

Simply put, the machine works to find patterns in data and then applies them.

For example, online retailers use ML to recommend products based on previous purchases in the consumer landscape. Machine learning is beneficial for recruiters who can leverage it to automatically send the right jobs to suitable candidates based on their career site activity, professional experience, and personal interests.

With that heavy lifting managed, recruiters can spend quality time conversing with candidates who are the most qualified, clearly motivated, and truly excited about joining the company. ML can further support these conversations by sending supporting messaging at the right time and through the right channel to ensure the highest candidate engagement rates.

Natural Language Processing: Learn, Speak, and Analyze the Language of Every Candidate

Natural language processing (NLP) helps computers understand, interpret, and manipulate human language. Virtual home assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri are all ways to engage with NLP systems daily.

Recruiting, screening, interviewing, and hiring activities now occur across multiple channels, including email, text, and social media. This allows for more opportunities for candidates to express their unique personalities with emojis, memes, and a more casual tone. Through NLP-powered chatbots, AI can help recruiters decipher these interactions accurately and quickly to accelerate applications and screening efforts.

NLP can also scan and anonymize content that might contribute to conscious or unconscious bias in the candidate screening process. With workforce planning becoming more global daily, it’s also useful for localized employer branding and hiring efforts.

Optical Character Recognition: Translate Images Into Useful Information

Optical character recognition (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten, or printed text into machine-encoded text. It may sound complicated, but many of us already interact with OCR regularly when we deposit a check via front and back pictures submitted through our mobile banking apps.

OCR can be deployed within talent acquisition to enable job seekers to scan resumes and other required documentation straight from their smartphones. The efficiency of the experience not only accelerates the application process but also creates a positive candidate experience. For example, many applicants complain (rightfully so) about having to input their resumes multiple times. Think about recruiting platforms that leverage OCR within their systems, creating a simple snap-and-apply feature.

Sentiment Analysis: Understand Candidate’s Interest

Finally, there is sentiment analysis, a subset of NLP. Sentiment analysis is the interpretation and classification of emotions (positive, negative, and neutral) within text data using text analysis techniques.

Using sentiment analysis, chatbots can pre-screen candidates by gauging responses to a pre-populated list of questions as positive, neutral, or negative. Sentiment analysis never presumes to qualify or disqualify a candidate completely. Rather, candidate sentiments are translated and give recruiters the information they need to make the best qualification decisions.

The Time for Leveraging AI Has Arrived

If conversations on social media and in the popular press aren’t apparent enough, consider this your official notification: AI is no longer the future; it’s the present.

Whether in response to the labor market, or the heavy competition to nab top talent before other businesses, it’s clear recruiters and companies are turning to AI technology like never before.

Arm yourself with the insight and understanding necessary to stay competitive by downloading Employ’s latest report: Automation and AI in Recruiting: Balancing the Risks and Rewards in a Modern Hiring Environment

The post How AI Helps Transform Your Talent Acquisition Function first appeared on Jobvite.

By David Hollady, CIPP/E, CIPM, Vice President of Legal & Data Protection Officer, Employ

The information provided here does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information, content, and materials provided here are for general informational purposes only.

As the world of work continues to undergo rapid transformation, employees are demanding more transparency in pay, and some lawmakers are moving to make it a legal requirement. Today, the conversation around pay transparency has evolved drastically from even just a few years ago. It has become a vital aspect of a thriving work culture that values open communication and an equitable work environment for employees.

It is no longer acceptable for companies to hide behind closed doors regarding salary information, especially as the demand for pay transparency is only increasing among candidates and employees. However, there are many businesses that still need to learn how to navigate this new age of salary transparency effectively.

As the movement toward pay transparency continues gaining momentum, organizations need to be fully aware of new legal aspects concerning pay and other compensation-related concerns to attract top talent and provide a fair and equitable work environment.

Employers need to embrace pay transparency fully to stay competitive and relevant in the labor market.

In this first part of the Employment Law Thought Leadership Series by Employ, we will explore various aspects of pay transparency, examine general legal considerations that companies should be aware of, identify how employers can create a fair and equitable work environment for their workers, and examine high-level benefits of pay transparency for applicants, current employees, and employers.

The new rules in pay transparency

While pay transparency can describe an entire category of varying requirements, guidelines, and legalities around compensation, the term most often refers to how orgs communicate the salary range for a given role. Job seekers and employees alike want to know, plainly and right up front, what the compensation is for a position. 

A recent study showed nearly all (98%) of workers believe companies should put salary ranges in their job postings. While that might seem like an incredibly high number, almost as staggering is that more than half (53%) of the same workers surveyed would not apply for a job if it did not contain a salary range in the job posting.

Pay transparency is particularly relevant for women and people of color who are often paid less than their male and white counterparts for the same job. Companies recognize that creating transparent pay structures benefits the employer brand, attracting top talent, and promoting pay equity nationwide.

In addition to the overwhelming majority of workers who want to see pay ranges become more transparent, recent legislation has made a salary range in a job description a non-negotiable detail.

In some states, organizations must file annual reports showing their company wages separated by gender, race, age, and other applicable categories. This level of reporting ensures transparency between companies and employees as well as the state Department of Labor.

Updated State-by-State Pay Transparency Laws

Some states have recently enacted their own versions of pay range transparency laws, meaning 25% of workers in the U.S. currently live in areas where employers are required to share pay ranges for most positions.

Broaching wage discussions in the workplace

With greater transparency into salary ranges, employers may wonder if pay can be discussed among employees within the organization. To put it plainly, The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in the United States protects the rights of employees to talk about their salaries with their coworkers.

The rise of pay transparency in organizations today means that employees are more likely to discuss their salaries. With legal protections in place for them to do so, it’s important that HR teams can answer these tough questions and ensure their compensation strategy is well defined and visible to employees and job seekers alike. 

Advantages of Pay Transparency for Applicants & Employees

When salary information is presented clearly to job seekers, those candidates who convert into applicants will be more aligned to the salary your company offers for the position. Operationally, this streamlines your recruiting process and ensures there are no surprises when you get to the offer stage.

The impact of pay transparency on existing employees is also overwhelmingly positive. When employers provide more detailed compensation information, employees can evaluate their worth more accurately and negotiate a better salary or promotion.

Making compensation structures visible tells current workers what they should expect to receive and encourages them to speak up if they are not currently in that range. This leads to more open, transparent conversations within the organization about pay.

It also helps ensure workers are paid fairly, regardless of race, gender, age, familial status, neurodiversity, or other individual characteristics. For example, with women making just 82% of what men earn for the same position, per Pew Research Center analysis, pay transparency can help decrease the pay gap that exists between genders.

When pay transparency is a priority for both employees and candidates, you can expect current workers to stay longer and job seekers to stay engaged in the recruitment process. Let’s take a look now at advantages for employers that do practice pay transparency.

Benefits of Pay Transparency for Employers

When discussing employee desire for pay transparency alongside legislation now requiring compliance, it’s easy to assume the benefits are one-sided. Luckily for employers, this simply isn’t true.

Aside from complying with the above-mentioned laws, pay transparency improves an employer’s ability to attract and retain top talent, bolstering their employer brand in the market.

Organizations can use transparent pay structures as leverage to recruit and retain quality talent, showing candidates and employees they are committed to equity and transparency in the workplace.

Engaging in open, honest conversations and pay practices around wage transparency also helps create a more positive work environment. It fosters greater employee satisfaction and higher morale.

Besides, transparency helps organizations identify and address issues, such as pay gaps, inconsistencies, and inequities, leading to better decision-making and more efficient use of resources.

Pay transparency is also shifting toward a matter of ethical responsibility and strategic business practice. By sharing pay information with workers, employers can attract top talent and give job seekers valuable insight into the company’s culture and values.

Companies that do not embrace pay transparency can lose out on top talent, particularly among millennials and Gen Z workers. These new generations of job seekers prioritize company culture and ethical practices, in which transparency is a critical aspect to both.

It’s worth mentioning again that including pay ranges in your job description means applicants are more likely to move forward with your application process. Leaving it out, even when you’re not legally required to include it, could cost you top talent.

Work toward greater pay transparency

With increasing legal regulations and growing awareness of the benefits of transparent pay structures, companies should actively implement pay transparency. This will empower your business to promote a healthy workplace culture, attract top talent, and create a level playing field for all workers.

The shift towards greater pay transparency in the United States is a positive step towards fair pay and a more equitable society. Employers must take proactive steps to ensure that they comply with these laws and continue to advocate for transparency in the workplace.

By openly sharing compensation data, companies of all sizes can identify and address pay disparities that may exist within the workplace. This helps ensure each person is paid fairly for the work they do, regardless of their background or unique characteristics.

As the landscape surrounding HR and employment law continues to evolve, it’s crucial for orgs to stay abreast of developments to manage compliance risks proactively. By coming out on the side of pay transparency, companies can position themselves as leaders in the ongoing effort to create a more equitable workforce for the future.

Subscribe to our blog for more content on emerging legal changes in HR and talent acquisition, and stay tuned each month for our Employment Law Thought Leadership Series.

The information provided here does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information, content, and materials provided here are for general informational purposes only.

The post Pay Transparency: What It Means for Your Business first appeared on Jobvite.