The Biggest Issue In Talent Acquisition

Talent Acquisition is changing. Over the last few years a plethora of new technologies have entered the market looking to automate and optimize all parts of the process.

In the last 12 months, much of this disruptive focus has been on the recruitment marketing element of Talent Acquisition. There are now numerous recruitment marketing platforms on the market offering variations on the marketing automation services that have proved popular and effective in other industries. For the most part these innovations should be welcomed, the level of sophistication in recruitment marketing has lagged behind that found in other marketing disciplines for decades and it is good to see things moving forward.

While recruitment marketing platforms promise much, they will deliver nothing however if talent acquisition leaders don’t pay attention to what has swiftly become the biggest issue facing recruitment marketing, the talent attention crisis.

We live in an age of digital noise and distraction. The rise of mobile devices sees us connected constantly where ever we are and the fire hose of social media is bombarding us with a stream of information so intense that focusing our attention properly on anything can be a struggle. Current methods of talent attraction are often adding to the noise by spamming poorly written job adverts into social media and bombarding potential candidates with untargeted and unwanted messages via LinkedIn.

With an increasing amount of this advertising and speculative outreach being ignored, many recruiters are turning up the volume and pumping out even more noise which is just causing larger numbers of potential hires to switch off. Short term attention grabbing gimmicks may work initially but in the long run have the potential to do more harm than good and alienate audiences even further.

There is a huge danger that the new recruitment marketing technologies will just add to this noise and make things even worse unless talent acquisition leaders have the right strategy in place.

The employers effectively cutting through this cacophony of noise are doing so by working long term to build trusted employer brands that people can’t help but take notice of. They are properly researching the needs of their target audiences of talent and are carefully targeting them with the right messages. In world dominated by technology, empathising the human factor is critical and marketing based on the use of authentic employee stories is proving be particularly effective. These stories are even more effective when they are properly backed up with persuasive messaging that sells both the employer and the opportunity to the potential candidate.

Measurement is also critical here. Response rates, social media metrics and careers site analytics are essential in understand just how and where the talent attention crisis is affecting each individual employer.

It is important to remember that recruitment marketing platforms are just tools and not the answer in themselves. They have the equal power to improve talent acquisition or to damage its effectiveness even further. To utilize them successfully talent acquisition leaders will need to ensure they fully understand the importance of talent attention, brand building and communication that can resonate in our ever noisier world.

Matt Alder’s co-authored book “Exceptional Talent” is published by Kogan Page in May 2017

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