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As each year ends, talent acquisition and recruitment teams plan their strategies for the next 12 months. The top TA teams tackle several critical tasks and address key areas like:
- Resolving issues with their hiring processes
- Revisiting language in their job descriptions
- Reevaluating their talent management
- Reconsidering what a qualified candidate looks like
- Reassessing where and how they source top talent
Developing a concrete action plan to improve their recruiting processes and hiring efforts is certainly the biggest end-of-year priority for talent acquisition teams.
But, while devising their TA approaches, it’s wise for these orgs to also stay on top of the industry’s top trends, particularly ones that will impact their work.
With that in mind, here are five talent acquisition trends to know about heading into 2024.
1) The (continual) rise of data-driven recruiting
- Consistent, data-driven talent acquisition and recruiting strategies will become table stakes.
Today’s talent acquisition leaders are the ones who ensure their teams have both data-driven mindsets as well as the requisite technology that enables their orgs to execute data-driven recruiting and TA strategies. (And, in turn, hire top talent in a scalable, repeatable way.)
That is, they use real-time analytics and insights — from pipeline growth metrics and offer acceptance rates to the quality and cost of new hires and candidate feedback scores — to help them in the short term (craft automated processes to reduce/eliminate manual work and improve in critical areas) and long term (routinely attract, engage and hire the best talent).
Everyone from sourcers and TA specialists to hiring managers and executives has access to and works from the same set of candidate and new-hire data in a single source of truth (e.g., a complete talent acquisition suite).
Conversely, talent teams that don’t embrace data in 2024 (and moving forward) will continue to have difficulty sourcing, nurturing, and hiring top quickly and efficiently — and at scale.
“Data is the key to enabling talent teams to be more strategic,” Renewal by Andersen Director of Talent & Culture Christina Schmit noted at our recent Ascend virtual conference.
Without data guiding your efforts, they will only find it more difficult to keep up with data-driven TA orgs who can better collaborate and bolster key recruiting and hiring metrics.
2) The increasing importance of talent nurturing
- Personalized, intelligent nurturing will be the biggest key to providing a premier candidate experience.
A key facet of recruiting today is candidate nurturing — specifically, automated, personalized nurture campaigns. Manually emailing prospects is time- and labor-intensive.
But, with the right ATS in place, you can deliver timely, bespoke emails and text messages to candidates of interest — and greatly reduce your manual recruiting efforts.
Manual nurturing is a dated, ineffectual, and unsustainable approach to building relationships with prospects and moving them through the funnel.
In 2024 and beyond, automated nurturing is what will both eliminate the needless complexity and inefficiency of manual communications and ensure you provide a personalized touch with your team’s targeted outreach to active and passive candidates.
The best nurture programs balance creativity with persistence. They are tested and optimized regularly (monthly or quarterly) to ensure each successive nurture campaign improves on the previous one. (That is, moves more job seekers into the interview process.)
Our research found Lever customers reduced time to hire by an average of 19% (from 49 to 40 days) and increased the average number of sourced hires by 40% after employing nurture strategies.
Simply put, automated nurturing is the future of candidate engagement for all employers.
3) The (growing) need to prioritize internal mobility
- Talent acquisition leaders who prioritize internal mobility will be the ones who retain top talent.
Nearly nine in 10 human resources leaders said 10% of their businesses’ open roles can be filled internally in 2021-22, per Randstad RiseSmart’s 2021 Career Mobility Outlook survey.
What’s more, the study found 88% of these HR professionals said their organizational leaders actively encourage their workers to apply for job openings within their companies.
These findings support the notion C-suites are finally understanding that, in a highly competitive job market that makes it harder to hire well-qualified candidates, they must focus on retaining their existing employees.
That means they need to create clear career paths for their workforce to entice them to stay.
It also means they must offer reskilling and upskilling for employees to avoid attrition and alleviate the pressure worker ‘churn’ would put on their talent acquisition teams.
Whether it’s offering stipends for certifications (e.g., analytics/data literacy, graphic design, management) or conducting in-house trainings (i.e., mentorship programs), business leaders must offer employees the chance to grow their skill sets and realize their career paths.
Sourcing new talent via job boards, social media, and other channels is obviously central to any modern and successful talent acquisition strategy. But, the (many) pros of prioritizing internal mobility can’t be ignored by executives at all companies any longer.
4) A renewed focus on employee engagement
- Distributed workforces will remain commonplace, making employee engagement a differentiator.
Like so many other companies, we shifted to a hybrid workforce model due to the pandemic.
Amid this transition, we evaluated our employee engagement approach and adjusted it as needed to ensure each team member — on-site and remote — were set up for success.
In 2024, a strong company culture will be less about making the office a fun environment and more about ensuring employees feel seen and heard by colleagues and managers, understand the value of their work to the business at large, and are set up to succeed in their respective roles.
The companies with strong values and an action plan to keep employees engaged are the ones that will win top talent in a competitive market and grow their businesses as desired.
Employee engagement starts with the interview and rolls into onboarding.
By rethinking how you engage your staff, you can boost retention and prove to external candidates your company cares about their well-being and long-term career path.
5) An effort to improve workers’ well-being
- Mental health and employee wellness will be a big focus for business leaders, including those in talent acquisition.
Burnout is real. (Something you’ve undoubtedly noticed just by reading LinkedIn post).
To make matters worse, employee well-being was the area CEOs said their orgs struggled with most amid the pandemic. In 2024, execs must address it head on (if they haven’t already).
This burnout has actually hit recruiters, talent acquisition specialists, and human resources pros especially hard over the last couple years.
On top of trying to achieve lofty hiring goals, those working in TA and HR have had to adjust to big changes like fully remote interview cycles and staying in sync with team members.
Thus, it’s no surprise a focus on mental health and wellness — and being flexible to employees’ needs regarding well-being — is now vital for all companies to thrive today.
The question is: With the world back to relative normalcy, how can you ensure employees — including TA and HR pros — keep up with personal development and mental health?
Lever Ascend keynote speakers Alison Hadden and Neil Pasricha relayed the importance of becoming a “better you” and how self-improvement and -care can lead to professional growth and greater happiness on the job.
The takeaway? Leaders at businesses small and large would be wise to heed these experts’ words of wisdom in the new year to help guide their staff through what is — and could remain — a disruptive and uncertain business and economic climate in 2024.
Learn how Lever can transform your talent acquisition strategy in 2024 and beyond. Book a demo today to discover our advanced yet easy-to-use ATS + CRM capabilities.
