Top Advice from Talent Acquisition Leaders: How Recruiters Can Successfully Navigate Uncertain Times

Recruiters, many who have led the way through the challenges of the Great Reshuffle, recently came together in San Francisco (in real life!) for LinkedIn’s Recruiter Reunion. They heard from talent leaders on how they can continue to help their organizations thrive through economic twists and turns. 

There were many thought-provoking insights, innovative practices, and ideas shared at this first Recruiter Reunion, but here were three takeaways that particularly stuck with me:

1. Embrace the lessons learned during the pandemic rather than retreat to the past

The pandemic and the subsequent Great Reshuffle have forced talent acquisition professionals to pivot quickly and to come up with new ways of working. The silver lining? They’ve learned a ton. And their new practices and approaches have allowed them — and their organizations — to be successful during an especially turbulent time.

For example, video interviews became the new norm during the pandemic. Just because many of us are starting to return to the office and interviewing in person, doesn’t mean that we should. Many companies brought in new talent, effectively and at scale, early in the pandemic using hiring processes that they had overhauled on the fly. 

Alice White, the director of Google Recruiting at Google, knows that there will be pressure to revert to practices that were in place three years ago. “While some managers say they still want to meet new hires, why does that have to happen during the interview process?” Alice asked. “Maybe we think more creatively about onboarding and about when that starts. It might start right when you get your offer and then you meet the team before you sign.”

Alice acknowledged that the remote world creates new challenges for building relationships. “You don’t have the same cues,” she said, “that you get when you walk into the room and you see it.” The remedy? Make relationships a priority by engaging with each and every candidate and taking time to describe what it’s like to work in your organization.

2. The talent you need may be right under your nose (think alumni hires and internal mobility)

During the vast talent migration of the Great Reshuffle, one of the notable trends that emerged is employees rejoining companies at which they had worked previously. 

Jennifer Shappley, LinkedIn’s VP of talent acquisition, suggested: “Checking in and thinking about who are those alumni hires — those folks that left your organization who are now thinking, ‘Maybe the grass wasn’t as green as I thought it was’ — is an important strategy to consider.”

And at LinkedIn, it’s a strategy that we’ve fine-tuned in recent years. “We do targeted campaigns toward folks that we want to bring back,” Jennifer said. “Alumni events are something we've done for years, but we’re now doing them with an even more targeted focus on top alumni.” 

Another recruiting tactic to find talent close to home is to look within your own organization. Not only is internal mobility an effective sourcing strategy, but it’s also an effective retention strategy.

“Your best retention tactic is to look for folks internally who are ready to popcorn up and look for something different,” Jennifer said. “For every employee that we keep, we don’t have to backfill. So, we make sure that we really understand the talent that’s within our organization and help match them with new opportunities internally.” 

3. Rather than sparring with your comp team, try collaborating with them

Not surprising — compensation and benefits are a top priority for job seekers. And yet talent acquisition professionals may often find it’s one of the areas where they have the least influence. Further complicating matters, recruiters haven’t always had the best relationship with their comp partners.

When Google was faced with their biggest hiring year yet in 2021, they addressed this head-on by sending people from their talent acquisition team into a rotation on the comp team. “We came to a moment last year,” Alice said, “where parts of our big hiring machine were at risk of screeching to a halt because we just couldn’t get offers out quickly enough. We lent out some of our recruiting leads to go sit on the compensation team and help.”

The result? “It changed everything,” Alice said, “because then we had a front-row seat. We came back with some really good tips for our team on how to work better with our comp partners.”

Final thoughts

As the market for talent remains uncertain, the work of recruiting will continue to evolve. Embracing learnings from the pandemic and the Great Reshuffle, looking for talent close to home, and building empathy with your compensation team are just a few of the ways that talent acquisition professionals may continue to thrive during this tumultuous time.

Moderator Liam Walsh, the head of product recruiting at LinkedIn, said it best as he closed out the panel. “Keep it simple,” Liam said, “and get back to what we do really well: telling stories and connecting with people is great advice. Own your role as a leader — you know this space. You’re the expert in the room and you can bring that back to your business, comp partners, and hiring managers.”

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