preface

Introduction to a Modern Talent Acquisition Strategy

The people we hire make or break our companies. This isn’t groundbreaking or earth-shattering. According to research by Boston Consulting Group, those companies that recruit the best deliver more than 3x the revenue and 2x the profit over their peers. Yet, somehow, we still can’t get hiring right. Why? It’s not because there isn’t alignment on the idea of hiring the best people. That’s a no-brainer — everyone, when given the choice, would hire the best person for a given role. Instead, the issue faced is one of complete complacency towards the actual practice of recruiting. Despite the disruptive dynamics of today’s job market and the drastically different expectations of today’s job seeker, many companies fallaciously view recruiting as a both a simple extension of their HR process and a transactional numbers game. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. To survive in today’s business climate, organizations must re-evaluate their recruiting practices and map hiring processes to today’s business realities for any hope of success. Refusal to do so is at their own peril.

Brace For Recruiting Disruption

Today, business disruption is at an all time high. Between 1955 and 2017, 88% of the F500 filed for bankruptcy, merged with (or were acquired by) another firm, or dropped out of the index entirely. This pace of disruption is only increasing as all industries brace for “a period of heightened volatility…with the next ten years shaping up to be the most potentially turbulent in modern history.” The rise of digitization in our work and personal lives, the Internet’s impact on globalization, the introduction of the on-demand gig economy, rapidly changing consumer behaviors, and the expansive connectivity of social platforms, have fundamentally changed the rules for businesses. These disruptive and volatile forces are turning the tables on business-as-usual, erasing overnight the long-term advantages and competitive barriers once enjoyed by industry giants, where “industries such as financial services, healthcare, telecom, travel and real estate have seen some of the highest rates of churn.”

Hire The Best to Thrive

Interestingly, this shake up brings us right back to recruiting, where all empirical research tells us that without the right people an organization’s lifespan is becoming shorter every day. Given intense competition from revolutionary startups, many established companies fortunately are changing their approach to stem talent exoduses. Understanding recruiting as a core, strategic function vital to long term success, these legacy companies are now heavily investing in modernizing their hiring practices. They are starting to rightly manage recruiting less like an HR process and more like a Marketing discipline by reinventing their image to woo job-seekers “with the same fervor they use to woo customers.” In short, these companies get it. There is simply no place in a digitally-disrupted economy for traditional, transactional, and complacent recruiting. Rather, recruiting must be proactive and strategic and leverage the right tools to attract, engage, and win over talent from the competition. And, like any strategic endeavor, it must have the most reliable and most relevant technology to be impactful.

You’re Only as Good as Your Recruiting Technology

Today, organizations are abandoning their legacy recruiting technology at an increasingly rapid pace. According to IDC’s most recent marketscape report from December 2017, “23% of organizations changed ATS solutions in the past 18 months – and another 22% plan to make a change in the next 18 months” with the most significant increase occurring in standalone, specialized recruiting technology. The shift to standalone, specialized recruiting solutions comes as no surprise in light of new market challenges where more and more companies view recruiting as a strategic enabler amid fierce competition. According to IDC, dedicated recruiting suites vastly outperform ERP (enterprise resource planning) extensions by “marry[ing] innovation with utility to deliver tangible value to hiring organizations big and small.” So, the quest for deeper recruiting functionally beyond that of recruiting modules / add-ons of ERP providers makes sense since the ability to attract top talent is only as good as the technology enabling it.

The Case for the Talent Acquisition Suite

Because business success so closely depends on recruiting success, running your most critical lifeline – the ability to attract, select, and hire great talent on time and on budget – while using the wrong technology is incredibly risky and potentially fool-hardy. Yet, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many organizations do just that, relying on outdated ERP systems for managing present day recruiting challenges. According to IDC and other industry experts, ERP systems are just not cutting it for recruiting in the digital economy. And, those who get it, who understand the importance of recruiting, are investing differently because recruiting is indeed a strategic function which demands its own dedicated technology for business to prosper. The good news is others are listening and the message is clearly resonating as more than half of companies today are investing in standalone technology that “demonstrates deep domain expertise in talent acquisition.”

In the following pages, we’ll dig deeper and explore why investing in a Talent Acquisition Suite for recruiting, as opposed to an ERP system, is one of the best business decisions a company can make.

Specifically, we’ll look at:

  • What’s changed for job seekers and recruiting?
  • We’ll explore the attraction and shift to stand-alone recruiting suites
  • Why the “all-in-one” ERP approach is misleading as a complete recruiting solution
  • We’ll explore the attraction and shift to stand-alone recruiting suites
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