6 Useful Ways to Modernize Your Talent Acquisition Strategy for Greater Success

Today, talent acquisition looks a lot different than it did twenty years ago.

Advanced technology, AI, and machine learning have changed the talent acquisition game altogether. In fact, they continue to bring much-needed change to the way companies hire.

Talent acquisition is more than just about finding your next great candidate. It’s about continuously building, optimizing and modernizing the hiring process.

Did you know that almost 60% of employers don’t have talent pipelines? No wonder recruiters are finding it hard to hire top talent. And here’s the grim reality: with an outdated talent acquisition strategy the candidate experience, follow-ups, and communication gets lost in translation. It’s a tangled situation.

So if you want to thrive in the ever-changing role of talent acquisition it’s time to reverse your strategy.

Here are 7 spectacular ways to help you modernize your talent acquisition strategy in 2022.

Leverage innovative technology

While it’s not entirely new to use hiring technology to manage and streamline recruitment, modern-day hiring platforms are continuously releasing new and upgraded features. Nowadays, many hiring platforms offer data-centered insights, world-class integrations, and brilliant applicant tracking that modernize talent acquisition. In fact, with such powerful tools employers get to remain relevant and ahead of the competition.

You’ll no longer feel discouraged from sporadic and low-volume recruiting once you leverage an innovative hiring platform. Simply because a strong hiring platform uses automation to help you get the right talent onboard, enhance your sourcing efforts, streamline team collaboration and eliminate manual processes. Once you add automation to your talent acquisition workflows you’ll instantaneously make them more streamlined and effective.

For example, a hiring platform like EVA-REC offers recruiters advanced features such as posting jobs on 2,000+ job boards, assigning weights to criteria, world-class integrations, advanced analytics and real-time team collaboration.

So in short, a modern hiring platform enables recruiters to reduce hiring costs, improve hiring decisions, build a great talent pool in advance, instantly pick out top talent from a pile, speed up hiring workflows, and sleekly modernize the talent acquisition strategy.

Build-future proof talent pipelines

In the midst of today’s talent crunch, it’s no longer enough to advertise a job, sit back, and wait for the applications to flow in. To modernize your talent acquisition strategy, you’ll need to plan for future hiring needs. This is done by simply building relationships with prospective candidates and acting fast to secure them when the time is right.

So what does this mean?

It’s means that you need to move away from recruiting reactively. That will only meet current needs. Instead, it’s time to build future-proof talent pipelines.

You’ll have to engage with candidates and build relationships ready for future roles. This is your best chance to build a powerful talent pipeline and proactively address future skill gaps. Keep in mind that nurturing relationships with external candidates will also give your sourcing and networking techniques an extra boost and a great strategic purpose.

Look at your careers site as a marketing tool

We’ve all seen it. The career sites with static pages, Shutterstock pictures, and outdated information. Nothing screams talent acquisition help like a career page that needs an entire revamp. If you’re starting to notice that candidates are no longer applying through your career page, there might be a reason. It’s time to shake things up a little and perhaps look at your career page in a different perspective. Consider it as a marketing tool that will help you attract and lure in top candidates.

In essence, your career page is mainly the first touchpoint with candidates. If should tell a story and show candidates, why they should work with you. Also, don’t hesitate to share warm team testimonials and authentic videos of your company. The entire point of your career page is to excite candidates and make sure they feel like they already fit in.
Besides, don’t lose out on great prospects just because there isn’t a role advertised that matches their skillsets. It won’t hurt to enable speculative applications and receive resumes straight into your talent pool.

But if you’re finding it hard to do all of that, fret no more. Modern hiring platforms like EVA-REC can help you attract a plethora of candidates through modern career pages that convert. Through your career page, you can effortlessly put your entire jobs and brand under the spotlight. And the best part? You don’t even need to drain your budget or write a single line of code. All it takes are a few minutes, several drag and drops, and some clicks. Then you’ll be up and running with a beautifully designed career page. Don’t believe it? Try it out!

Modernize communication with candidates

Last year, we started to face some dramatic shifts in the workplace. It threw employers, recruiters, and candidates off guard. The traditional communication lines we once knew, no longer seemed to cut it.

Now is the perfect time to give recruiters the freedom to add more touchpoints to the hiring process and share the unique, authentic experiences of your company.

Text. Email. Social media. IM. The list goes on.

We’re all swamped with messages. But you don’t want to be just another message left cold in the candidate’s inbox.
Our tip? Modernize the communication process and make the candidate experience more valuable by communicating with them through the channels they already use on a daily basis.

Let’s take Gen Z as an example. This generation lives and breathes technology. You can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll reply faster to a text message than email.

Also, young candidates crave and prefer personal communication. You’ll notice a huge boom in the response rate once you use text messages to communicate with them. The younger generation have a shorter attention span and tend to lose interest fast. So if your talent acquisition strategy has your recruiters emailing this young generation oh so infrequently, you’re doing it wrong.

In short, it’s crucially important to fully understand the candidates you are targeting and adapt your talent acquisition strategy to suit their preferred method of communication.

Strengthen your employer brand online and offline

HR and marketing might be two separate fields — but in today’s world the line between the two is gradually blurring out.

Candidates want to work for more than just a salary. They want to resonate with a powerful employer brand and join an inspiring team. And the truth is, your career page isn’t the only thing that dictates the greatness of your employer brand.

Your employer brand includes how your employees perceive it and what they say on social media about their experience. It’s also what you publish across your digital properties. Keep in mind, that candidates pay attention to all of this.

Building a strong brand is similar to building a good school. You’ll need to build a culture of graduation where you can offer great training to all employees. Perhaps it’s helping them fine-tune their skills or familiarize themselves with new emerging technologies. At the end of the day, you can’t modernize your talent acquisition strategy when your employees aren’t upgrading their skillsets, right?

Also, if you have the means to provide for it, why not build mentorship programs at work? Provide career guidance to employees and help new hires fit right in by connecting them with the mentors they need to get on the right foot.
And if you can’t afford a mentorship program, no worries. You can actively promote yourself, attend humanitarian events, respond to reviews, and encourage training opportunities, however small.

At the end of the day you need to remember one thing: your employer brand isn’t just about a splashy brochure or a fresh new career page. It’s about the candidate and employee experience that you have to offer. So make sure it’s a superb one!

Re-think the role of the HR manager

To fully modernize your talent acquisition strategy, you must realize that an HR manager is so much more than a person responsible for only bringing in new hires. The roles and responsibilities of an HR manager have entirely evolved in this day and age. And we have Covid19 and advanced technology to thank for that.

The advancements in technology have led us to re-imagine and automate the entire talent acquisition process in the blink of an eye. Now, HR managers no longer need to do the manual tasks that were on their plates. Today, they need to fully embrace digitization and the changes it will bring along.

Which means, they have to foster an entire new mindset. Now, they have to be ninjas on social media, communication gurus and above all, brand ambassadors.

In modern-day talent acquisition, HR managers shouldn’t only be concerned about netting top talent. They need to be concerned as well about their employees’ well-being and provide solace to those who have been laid off or furloughed due to the pandemic. But employee centricity isn’t the only thing they should focus on. They need to focus on value creation and cost reduction through effective resource utilization. HR managers should actively encourage new ways of working and cross-functional collaboration by responding fast and flexibly to new HR trends. This means, that part of their role should be to promote and instill diversity, advocate candidate inclusiveness and encourage team collaboration.

Get a move on mobile recruiting

Did you know that around 60% of candidate use their mobile phones to search for jobs? Since the majority of people spend an average of 5 hours on their mobile phones, it only makes sense to make certain activities like recruiting mobile-friendly for candidates.

So if you’re not implementing mobile recruiting methods, then you’re most likely going to miss out on some great potential candidates.

The truth is, candidates tend to abandon online applications when it takes them more than 30 minutes to fill. And this debacle continues to plague the recruiting industry. In fact, approximately 60% of candidates quit in the middle of filling out their online applications because they are never-ending and complex.

Our pro-tip? Make the hiring process mobile-friendly. Start off with the application process. Let candidates apply to jobs from their smartphones and make it easy for them to submit their online profiles with a few taps only. Also, make sure your company’s website, career page, and landing pages are mobile-friendly too.

Final words

Driving an effective and modern talent acquisition strategy is both art and science. The great news? All these tips allow you to build a portfolio of creative ideas to bring in qualified and excited candidates to your doors.
21st century technology continues to moves so fast that it can be hard to keep up with the changes taking place in talent acquisition. Modernizing your talent acquisition strategy isn’t just a matter of some helpful tips. It’s a crucial step and a necessary change that will move you forward towards better workflows and better recruitment.

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