Introduction

We look ahead to a winning talent acquisition strategy in 2020 with resource and budget planning in mind. It can take months to gain internal alignment on the vision and strategy, gather requirements from all stakeholders, followed by research and evaluation (including assessment of vendors themselves) before making a decision. From there, it takes several more months to migrate data, deploy, train, and effectively roll out a new technology across any organization.

Options Aplenty in Recruiting Technologies

The talent acquisition industry is a hotbed of innovation. On one hand, emerging technologies attract significant investment every year. Venture capital funding in the space reached nearly $1 Billion in 2016, more than 3X the amount from 2014 (Crunchbase). On the other hand, businesses continue to demonstrate strong willingness to spend for recruiting technology in order to acquire top talent. Market demand for recruiting technology and services is estimated to exceed $100 billion in 2020 with CAGR of 5.1% (IDC).

Growing demand from both investors and businesses have fostered rapid advancements in recruiting technologies, with the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) at the center of all activity. Most new players enhance or disrupt a key step of the ATS workflow, but do not replace it altogether. After all, any growing business still needs a core tool or system of record for candidates, and early trends like social recruitment marketing and analytics have become table stakes capabilities of a modern ATS.

Today, recruiting technology vendors are tackling more daunting challenges such as enhancing talent pipelines, transforming hiring practices from reactive to proactive, and automating routine processes—ultimately to secure top talent faster and more cost effectively. These are no longer challenges that can be solved by building features and functions, but ones that require significant planning and development on a system-wide level.