Brandon Hall Group’s 2017 State of Talent Acquisition Study* is a big-picture look at talent acquisition from sourcing through onboarding. We ask organizations to indicate the criticality of their practices within each area of talent acquisition, and how effectively they implement those practices.
Overall, organizations tend to be critical of their own practices. I think part of that tendency is due to their continuous effort to improve organizational performance. However, some of the importance and effectiveness gaps were significant. For instance, for sourcing (which includes recruiting), almost three-quarters (73%) of organizations feel their recruitment marketing strategy is important or critical to their business. And yet, only 38% consider their recruitment marketing strategy to be effective or very effective.
There are several possible reasons that are probably driving this lack of effectiveness. First, 63% of organizations don’t even have an effective talent acquisition strategy, and one-quarter of the organizations are acting in a reactionary manner when it comes to sourcing. If the organization doesn’t have an overarching talent acquisition strategy that is aligned with the organization’s goals, and is acting in a reactionary manner, it is pretty difficult to have an effective recruitment marketing strategy. Simply put, your talent acquisition, recruitment, and organizational goals should be in alignment. If one of those pieces is missing, it will hinder the effectiveness of your strategies.
Second, as I pointed out in one of my previous blogs on Brandon Hall Group’s Recruitment Marketing Survey, only about half of the organizations (47%) surveyed have the skills internal to their HR and recruiter team to perform recruitment marketing. Training may be needed to help improve competencies in that area.
Third, in terms of recruitment marketing technology, many organizations do not have the solutions needed to effectively manage their recruitment marketing. For instance, about 53% have a candidate relationship management (CRM) solution. CRMs automate many of the time-consuming recruitment practices, like talent pipeline building, running email and social campaigns, job posting distribution, and so forth. In order to have an effective recruitment marketing strategy, you need to include technology solutions to efficiently implement those strategies. Applicant tracking systems are just the start.
As I said, this survey covers the full spectrum of talent acquisition practices. So be on the lookout for more blogs and research reports about how we can improve talent acquisition practices.
–Daria Friedman, Principal Analyst, Talent Acquisition, Brandon Hall Group
*Preliminary results. Data may change.