The Two Vital Ingredients Of A Future-Proof Recruitment Strategy

The cost to your company from delayed and inefficient recruitment is like an iceberg. You only see the top 10 percent floating above the surface, the rest is hidden from sight. Ignore the issue long enough and your organisation could end up like the Titanic. In the highly competitive modern job market, avoiding the ice altogether may be a tall order – you will face issues getting top talent in at the right time. But with a future-proof recruitment strategy, you can still keep your company in relatively fine fettle.

Decoding The Art And Science Behind A Recruitment Strategy

A successful recruitment strategy has many moving parts and processes, including job postings, sourcing, screening, interviews, compensation, and more. However, when we boil them down to the bare essentials, we get two main building blocks – data and branding. In other words, every successful talent acquisition strategy requires an approach that combines science and art.

The art here refers to the subjective, human element in the recruitment process. After all, as an HR professional, a significant part of your job is dealing with real human beings, with independent thought, world views, and aspirations. A successful hiring process requires strategic use of elements that can appeal to candidates and convince them to join your organisation.

Science, on the other hand, is much more straightforward and objective. Thanks to information technology, recruiters now have access to an unprecedented quantity of raw data. Through the careful use of recruitment metrics and KPIs, you can unearth critical insights regarding weaknesses in your existing recruitment strategies, and how you can overcome them.

Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid, was a champion of this idea that innovation required people who could stand at the intersection of humanities/arts and science. The late Steve Jobs was deeply influenced by Land’s views, as reported by his biographer Walter Isaacson. 

Moving forward, two main factors will play a decisive role in recruiting – employer branding (art-oriented) and AI automation (science & technology).

Why Employer Branding Towers Above All Else In Recruiting

The world of business has been profoundly transformed by the twin effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing process of digital transformation. However, according to the Harvard Business Review, the impact on recruitment is not so much a total disruption, but rather, an acceleration of pre-existing trends.

Either way, the rules of engagement have changed drastically for employers venturing in the job market of India. Employer branding and reputation can play a critical role in attracting the best talent in the post-pandemic world.

In its latest edition of the global talent survey, employer branding specialist Universum highlights some interesting trends about the future workforce in India. Apart from overseas placements and high future earnings, the top employer preference among students is a “friendly work environment.” Another top-five priority is “flexible work conditions” or hybrid work.

Organisations that cultivate a brand persona highlighting these desirable traits will have a much easier time attracting the top graduates in the upcoming years. The concept of Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is vital here. It represents the sum total of value an employee can expect from an organisation.

A concerted branding strategy is necessary to promote this idea among candidates joining your organisation. This comes with certain guaranteed benefits beyond just salary and bonuses. According to a 2016 study by risk assessment firm Willis Tower Watson (PDF), employers with well-defined EVP find it easier to attract the top talents.

Employees in such companies are also 76 percent more likely to stay in their jobs longer and remain more engaged and productive as well. Gartner claims that employers that deliver a clear and consistent EVP enjoy a 69 percent reduction in annual employee turnover. From a hiring perspective, Indeed surveys indicate that 97 percent of candidates look at employer reputation before accepting a job offer.

Why You Need To Prepare Your Recruitment Department For Automation

Many aspects of recruitment and hiring are highly repetitive and monotonous tasks. Posting job adverts, sending out e-mail alerts, executing a social media hiring strategy with posts and analytics, screening large numbers of job applications, the list goes on and on.

According to the panellists at an AI Summit organised in India in 2022, repetitive and monotonous are also the common denominator of jobs that are most likely to be impacted by Artificial Intelligence (AI). This makes recruitment a prime target for AI disruption in the immediate future.

HR executives spend at least three to four hours of their day doing manual tasks that could easily be automated, according to a McKinsey report on the post-pandemic future of work. The potential impact of automation on candidate experience, especially in high volume recruitment, is also quite remarkable.

A study by Aptitude indicate that hiring processes without automation suffer a 65 percent increase in candidate drop-offs. Poor candidate experience is often the culprit, and 43 percent of candidates dropped off in the early apply phase itself. 

AI-powered Chatbots can make a difference here, automating early screening of resumes, improving candidate experience through QAs, and even conducting initial candidate assessments. According to Gartner, a full 69 percent of such routine managerial tasks could be automated by 2024. 

Of course, there are some clear limitations to what an AI can do for your recruitment process. However, the risks are outweighed by the sheer volume of benefits in terms of speed, agility, efficiency, and most importantly, cost savings. McKinsey reports that in HR, organisations using AI technology experienced a 29 percent of cost reduction in 2021.

The ramifications of AI are clear – any organisation that fails to onboard the technology in time will fall behind the competition. And in a labour-intensive discipline like recruitment, this could render your business incapable of finding quality hires in a job market that shows no sign of cooling down.

Key Takeaways From The Indian Job Market For Future Of Recruiting

The sad paradox of the Indian job market is an abundance of workers, combined with a crippling employability crisis. An India Today article from 2022 paints a stark picture – among fresh talent, “only one in four MBAs, one in five engineers, and one in 10 graduates are considered employable.”

According to NASSCOM surveys, the demand-supply gap in digital tech talent could increase over 3.5 times by 2026. Over 74 percent of Indian business leaders responding to an Equinix survey on global tech trends considered the shortage of skilled personnel an existential threat.

In light of these trends, creating a modernised talent acquisition strategy should be at the forefront of any forward-thinking organisation. And a renewed focus on employer branding and AI automation is essential to remain competitive in the job market.