As part of our suite of modular recruiting solutions, Amplifiers™, PeopleScout Talent Sourcing provides the perfect way to boost your recruitment resources, engage with passive candidates and reach your hiring goals faster. Don’t settle for the limitations of ordinary job ads—our sourcers bring a personal touch that ignites excitement about your opportunities. Candidates get a great experience. You get a short or long list of qualified, genuinely enthusiastic applicants.
Situation A local authority in the southwest of England had a robust talent acquisition team but required additional support for front-end headhunting and sourcing assignments. A new and niche position for a harbor master demanded a comprehensive strategy to locate the right specialist. A habor master ensures the safety of all users of a harbor,…
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face unique challenges in attracting and retaining top talent. Limited resources, lack of dedicated recruitment teams, and the need for agility in hiring can often put smaller businesses at a disadvantage. That’s where Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) comes in— a versatile strategy that businesses of all sizes can leverage to…
Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured attention across nearly every industry for its seemingly boundless potential to transform how work gets done—including AI in recruiting. Yet for many talent acquisition (TA) leaders, AI remains shrouded in hype, myths and even fear that “robot recruiters” are taking over.
This handbook sets out to demystify AI tools for recruitment with facts about real-world applications across talent acquisition capabilities and provide guidance on how talent teams can start planning to use AI effectively and ethically. We’ll cut through the hype to bring AI down to earth—focusing on what works, not what’s flashy.
The message we want to reinforce upfront is that AI should not be seen as a replacement for the talent acquisition strategy you’ve already built, but rather a set of tools to make your teams better at tasks both mundane and meaningful.
📌 Before we go any further, here’s a note from our legal team:
The information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal or other professional advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available in this article are for general information purposes only. Readers of this article should contact their attorney or legal advisor to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter. No reader of this article should act or refrain from acting on the basis of information in this article without first seeking legal advice from counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this article are expressly disclaimed by PeopleScout, Inc.. The content in this article is provided “as-is”, and no representations are made by PeopleScout that the content is error-free.
What is AI?
The term artificial intelligence or AI was coined by Stanford Professor John McCarthy, who defined it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.” AI is technology with the ability to perform tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence. Data and algorithms enable AI to “learn” how to accomplish complex tasks without being explicitly programmed to do them. It also includes the sub-fields of machine learning, speech and natural language processing and robotic process automation.
Over the last decade, AI capabilities have advanced tremendously due to increases in computing power, the abundance of digital data and improvements in machine learning algorithms. As a result, AI solutions can now match or even outperform humans in certain tasks related to object recognition, language processing, prediction modelling and more.
The disruption delivered by generative AI in particular arrived like a bullet train. In just a few short months, AI went from an abstract concept to a tangible force radically impacting businesses—and jobs—worldwide. With Generative AI (GAI) tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini (formerly Bard) and Microsoft Copilot, AI has gone from expensive and exclusive to an everyday tool accessible by the masses.
The State of AI in Recruiting
Top talent has become increasingly scarce and competitive, while recruiting resources and budgets remain strained. This situation demands that talent acquisition teams work smarter, and AI and automation could represent an opportunity for organizations to enhance human capabilities in recruitment.
According to Gartner, a massive 81% of HR leaders have explored or implemented AI solutions to improve process efficiency within their organization. HR leaders aim to use generative AI (GAI) for improving efficiency in HR processes (63%), enhancing the employee experience (52%) and bolstering learning and development programs. Plus, 76% of HR leaders believe that if their organization does not adopt AI solutions in the next year or two, they will lag behind those that do.
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What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of AI in Recruitment?
While AI holds tremendous promise, it also comes with some real concerns which talent acquisition and HR leaders must thoughtfully address. AI is largely unregulated and has received criticism for negative impacts on things like privacy, security, bias, and transparency in its decision-making processes. However, with care and diligence, you can establish sensible guidelines at your organization, so this technology enhances your talent acquisition capabilities while respecting human values.
Benefits of AI for Recruiting
AI can help the humans behind your talent program work more efficiently and effectively when used correctly. Applying AI across the various recruiting stages introduces a host of benefits, including:
Efficiency AI-powered tools can shoulder time-consuming tasks like communications and initial screening, allowing recruiters to reach more candidates at scale. AI systems help recruiters to focus their efforts on the most promising prospects, including helping identify passive candidates. This wider reach improves quality by putting recruiters in front of more qualified candidates.
Improved Candidate Experience Tools like AI chatbots and self-scheduling create a seamless 24/7 candidate experience. By fielding frequently asked questions and coordinating interviews, they dramatically reduce time-to-hire. Candidates get quick responses instead of waiting for recruiters to come online, making the hiring process faster and frictionless.
Improved Matching Advanced AI algorithms surface qualified prospects that may have been overlooked. By analyzing candidates’ skills, experience, and other attributes and matching them to open roles, AI systems ensure better candidate-job fit. This improves quality-of-hire and unlocks hidden talent pools recruiters may have missed.
Enhanced Diversity and Inclusion With the right data to learn from, AI reduces unconscious bias from hiring by focusing decisions on data rather than gut instinct. By objectively evaluating candidates’ skills without prejudice, AI-assisted recruiting enhances diversity and creates a more equitable hiring process.
Cost Reduction AI can reduce the cost-per-applicant in some cases. Recruiters can outsource low-impact, repetitive tasks to AI, and spend more time interacting with candidates and hiring managers. This optimization of talent acquisition teams enables resources to be allocated more efficiently, reducing vacancy rates and lowering costs.
Risks of AI in Recruiting
While there are benefits, talent leaders must thoughtfully address common concerns around AI transparency, interpretation of outputs, data privacy and ethics.
PeopleScout POV
PeopleScout is committed to striking the right balance between next-generation technology and maintaining the trust we’ve built with candidates and clients. As our clients’ trusted talent advisors, we do our due diligence and work touphold our standards for quality and compliance when helping clients adopt new technologies like GenAI.
As organizations prepare to capitalize on the efficiencies of AI, they must be particularly discerning about AI when it comes to supporting people decisions. Effectively deploying and scaling AI across talent acquisition functions introduces some common challenges, including:
Biased Algorithms Despite its ability to reduce bias, if AI models are trained on biased or incomplete data sets, they can unintentionally perpetuate inequality. In many countries there are laws prohibiting discrimination in the recruitment process, and the use of AI must align with these laws. Leaders need oversight into data inputs and must remain vigilant when considering recommendations made by AI. That being said, bias in AI can be corrected much easier than bias amongst humans. Proactively monitoring and mitigating possible areas of bias is essential for driving more inclusive, equitable hiring—regardless of whether AI is involved.
Disproportionate Impact Certain demographic groups face higher exposure to the potential harms of AI in recruitment. For instance, if an AI screening system relies heavily on standardized test scores that have racial biases, it could automatically filter out qualified minority candidates. Similarly, lower income communities may lack access to the digital tools and internet connectivity required for AI screening. This digital divide could automatically exclude qualified candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds. Without proactive measures to address these systemic issues, AI recruitment tools risk amplifying real-world inequality. Organizations must consider disproportionate impact with their use of AI in order to improve diversity and reinforce equity.
Lack of Transparency Organizations may experience resistance amongst candidates and employees when there is a lack of understanding of how AI is being used in the hiring process and how AI arrives at certain outputs or recommendations. You can nurture trust through training and effective communication to help recruiters, hiring managers and applicants understand the reasons behind AI-generated outcomes and their role in the hiring decision-making process. Use clear and understandable language to describe the factors influencing decisions and put mechanisms in place to capture feedback and reporting of potential issues. Transparency promotes ethical AI use in recruitment and also reinforces organizational values and establishes a positive reputation in the industry.
Data from Pew Research Center shows that 61% of Americans are unaware that employers are currently using AI in the hiring process. A majority (71%) oppose AI making a final hiring decision, while 41% oppose AI being used to review applications. However, the more people understand about AI, the more they’re in favor of its use in the recruitment process. For example, 43% of those who’ve heard a lot about using AI in the hiring process support its use for reviewing applications, compared with 37% who’ve heard a little and 21% who’ve heard nothing at all.
Lack of Accuracy GAI is prone to making up statistics, sources and even case law—known as hallucinating. There are no safeguards in place to validate the generated content or to check the accuracy or appropriateness of the outcome. Organizations leveraging tools like ChatGPT for recruiting open themselves up to risks. Recruiters must be aware of the importance of the human touch and using their judgement when using GAI tools for creating content and communications.
Over-Automation Heavy reliance on AI also poses risks if the recruitment process becomes overly automated and fails to incorporate sound human judgment as a check. Too much automated communication can feel depersonalized to a candidate. AI should never replace the human touch—rather it should enhance human capabilities. Plus, companies using AI for recruitment must ensure compliance with all relevant regulations. For example, under GDPR, there are strict guidelines around automated decision-making, and individuals have the right to obtain human intervention and contest automated decisions that significantly affect them.
Data Privacy Issues Collecting and analyzing extensive candidate information required by AI systems can raise concerns around consent, data protection, and ethical usage. Any talent data feeding the AI systems must be compliant with regulations, like GDPR and CCPA, that are relevant to your locations. Organizations should create a framework around the usage of AI recruitment tools to provide transparency around what data you’re collecting, gain consent where applicable, and put access controls and encryption in place to protect sensitive candidate information. Your data security team should vet any AI usage to ensure candidate data is not being scraped for other uses.
Workflow Integration Implementing AI recruiting tools requires integrating them into existing systems and processes. Too often, companies adopt AI in isolation, without considering its impact on surrounding workflows. Instead, organizations should evaluate how AI technologies will interface with current infrastructure. For example, your applicant tracking system (ATS) may need API connections to import AI-screened candidates. With careful integration planning, AI can be a seamless augmentation to talent acquisition rather than an isolated add-on.
Proactively addressing these concerns through governance, oversight and continuous improvement of AI systems and processes is key to managing the risks responsibly. Overall, the use of AI in recruitment is permitted but becoming more and more tightly regulated. Systems cannot make final hiring decisions and must be transparent, fair and accountable. Adhering to data protection laws and anti-discrimination regulations is crucial for the ethical use of AI in hiring. Undergoing regular audits to assess for unintended bias and maintaining the human touch to review, override or contest automated recommendations is crucial.
📌 We recommend you consult your legal team before implementing any AI technologies at your organization.
Use Cases for AI in Recruitment
As recruiting grows more competitive, organizations are turning to smart technologies to gain an edge in attracting and engaging candidates. From chatbots to video interviews and skills assessments, AI-powered solutions are streamlining efficiencies while enabling deeper insights across the hiring funnel. Here are some examples demonstrating AI’s immense potential to boost recruiting outcomes while improving the candidate experience.
How to Use AI for Candidate Attraction and Sourcing
Identifying, contacting and engaging prospective candidates is ripe for AI augmentation. Building a robust pipeline of talent typically involves highly manual, repetitive tasks that can divert focus away from higher-value tasks. Here are some of the ways AI can support you in filling your recruitment funnel.
Building Candidate Personas
AI can pull from the profiles of existing employees and historical hiring data for a given role to surface patterns and common characteristics. These patterns, combined with qualitative data gathered from interviews, can help you to define a persona profile of the ideal candidate for the role.
A persona is a fictional character profile that represents the different types of candidates who would be successful in a role. Personas focus on individual characteristics, behaviors, interests, goals, motivators and challenges. With these in place, you can create alignment across your recruitment and sourcing strategies. Your persona profiles should provide specific guidance about how to find candidates who fit the profile, including targeted messages that will resonate.
Since launching in late 2022, ChatGPT and other GAI chatbots, like Bing Chat, Gemini (formerly Bard) and more, quickly permeated the workplace. These tools mimic human communication and can help with everything from content creation and market analysis to simply writing emails. They can also be used to write job descriptions.
By feeding them with relevant prompts that detail the job tasks and required skills as well as employer brand elements like tone of voice, the GAI chatbot can produce a first draft job description in seconds. The hiring manager and recruiter can then massage this text to create the final posting.
For existing job descriptions, AI can be used to measure sentiment and detect biased language. There are a variety of AI-powered online tools that can highlight biased language—like “ambitious” or “expert,” which are stereotypically masculine—to ensure you’re not turning off a portion of your talent audience.
Previously a manual process, AI can sift through a huge number of online profiles to find candidates with the skills you’re looking for. For example, the AI-powered Affinix CRM tool in PeopleScout’s total talent suite Affinix® searches millions of online profiles to find passive candidates with the skills and competencies that match the role. The AI also assesses the likelihood of a candidate being open to a new opportunity by combining the average tenure of each job listed on their profile with the average aggregate tenure of all other candidates in that same role.
Manually identifying passive candidates who have similar titles but may not be actively searching for a job can take hours of dedicated time. AI can reduce manual efforts and massively speed up the recruitment process. Plus, it helps you concentrate on skills, rather than experience, to expand your candidate pool.
Predictive Analytics
Machine learning models can also provide predictive and prescriptive hiring recommendations based on a candidate’s profile. AI can assess genuine interest, candidate motivations, likelihood to accept an offer and even predicted tenure. This empowers recruiters to be more informed for interview prep and can help them personalize outreach messages to appeal specifically to what matters most for each candidate.
Over time as engagement data is captured, AI models continue to improve, learning what messages and channels persuade candidates with various profiles and career trajectories. This creates a positive feedback loop, compounding efficiencies over each recruiting cycle.
How to Use AI for Candidate Screening & Interview Support
Manual candidate screening based on résumés and CVs alone can be an imperfect, biased exercise. With AI lending a “second pair of eyes,” you can ensure quality candidates are not being overlooked. Here are some elements of the process that AI can enhance.
First Sift
Natural language processing tools can ingest thousands of résumés and CVs, and analyze the content, context, and trends across the talent pool within seconds. AI tools can be trained to recognize specific skills, experiences and competencies that are required for open roles and then score and rank applicants automatically against your ideal candidate profile.
Look for tools with a dashboard that highlights the “cream of the crop” candidates that demonstrate the closest alignment, enabling you to reach out or pass the most promising applicants to hiring managers quickly.
Real-Time Screening
Intelligent chatbots, like text and SMS screening tools, create a conversational experience for candidates using natural language processing. These mobile-friendly, text interview tools automatically screen candidates using predetermined questions that gauge their interest and qualifications. Based on the responses, the chatbot can instantly determine the next step for each specific candidate.
AI is also leveraged for pre-employment assessments. New tech platforms can test and measure candidates for skills mastery, personality traits, and cognitive abilities to ensure qualified candidates are advancing through the recruitment process. All results should be reviewed by a human to ensure compliance with relevant regulations around automated decision-making. Leveraging AI in skills assessment helps ensure recruiters and hiring managers can focus on priority candidates most likely to succeed in the role, increasing equity along the way.
Want to learn more about how AI can boost your recruitment processes?
AI-powered candidate engagement tools help you create seamless, personalized experiences at scale—boosting candidate satisfaction, accelerating the hiring process and freeing up recruiters to focus on relationship building—where they add the most value.
Personalized Candidate Communications
For several years now, organizations have been leveraging candidate relationship management (CRM) technology to automate communications with candidates throughout the hiring journey. Automated email drip campaigns deliver the right information at the right stage in the journey to keep candidates informed of next steps and engaged with content that is relevant to them. This helps you build personalized engagement at scale.
More recently, recruiters are using GAI platforms like ChatGPT to help them with drafting one-off emails to candidates. Leveraging the appropriate prompts, a recruiter can get a first draft from ChatGPT which they can then review and edit to fit for specific candidates. This has the potential to save hours’ worth of work each week for your talent acquisition team.
Chatbots
Chatbots leverage natural language processing to manage various high-volume, repetitive inquiries from candidates. Whether answering frequently asked questions (FAQs) about application status, the interview process, the company or the job role, chatbots provide consistent, accurate responses 24/7—especially relevant when recruiters aren’t working. This improves candidate satisfaction while enabling recruiters to focus on higher-value activities.
Intelligent messaging platforms can initiate one-way communications at scale to nurture candidates. Using data on the prospect, role, process stage and more, AI writing assistants dynamically generate personalized, thoughtful messages. This level of personalization improves candidate engagement, advances candidates quicker through the funnel and strengthens employment brand affinity.
Calendar management bots can take over the time-consuming back-and-forth of scheduling interviews, assessments, site visits and more. By integrating with hiring manager calendars, only convenient time slots are shown to candidates. Candidates automatically receive confirmations and reminders, eliminating this task for recruiters and increasing the likelihood of candidates attending interviews.
How to Get Started with AI in Recruiting
Your steps into AI should focus on exploration rather than big integrations. AI in recruitment is fast-moving and receiving more and more scrutiny from law makers, and an RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) partner can act as a strategic advisor on your AI recruiting journey. RPOs have experience implementing recruitment tech like AI software for clients and can advise on the best options for your needs, integration requirements, data needs, ethical usage, and workflow design.
By leveraging RPO expertise, companies can effectively implement AI-enhanced hiring with less disruption and a faster return on investment. Look for a partner that is moving at your speed when it comes to AI in recruiting. They’ll help you identify areas for quick wins, and help you expand this success through experimentation and testing.
Here are some ways an RPO partner can help your explore AI for recruitment:
Change Management: RPOs can ease the transition to automated processes and drive adoption through training and ongoing support. They can also develop training programs to upskill your in-house recruiters on using AI tools effectively and ethically in accordance with your internal AI policies.
Process Design: RPOs can redesign recruitment workflows to integrate AI tools. For example, PeopleScout’s Talent Diagnostic examines your talent lifecycle, evaluating your employer brand and your attraction strategy, as well as looking for ways to optimize the candidate experience through technology usage.
Ongoing Optimization: RPOs can continuously monitor and evaluate AI outputs and fine-tune processes. These insights will help you improve outcomes over time.
Compliance Monitoring: RPOs stay current on regulations affecting AI in recruiting to advise on lawful and ethical usage in conjunction with your internal legal team.
AI in Recruiting: Potential and Responsibility
AI has demonstrated tremendous potential to transform talent acquisition. As this handbook outlines, it’s no longer just hype, rather it’s delivering real impact across sourcing, screening, interviewing and candidate engagement.
The results you’ll experience from AI depend heavily on factors like data quality, transparency, integration with existing systems and processes, and governance to ensure responsible usage. AI solutions are meant to augment—not replace—the human touch in recruitment. Recruiters are invaluable when it comes to relationship building, coaching and negotiation, and AI can’t replicate what makes them uniquely human.
Looking ahead, the use of AI recruiting technology to connect people to purpose will only continue expanding. Cultivating an ethical, inclusive and values-based recruiting culture remains key when it comes to attracting employees who align with your organization’s mission. With human stewardship over AI in recruiting, the future of talent acquisition looks bright.
Healthcare organizations face a number of unique recruitment challenges compared to other industries. Finding and attracting candidates with the specific clinical, medical, and administrative skills required is an ongoing battle, especially for critical roles like nurses, physicians and specialist practitioners. With a large portion of the healthcare workforce reaching retirement age, an older population demanding more healthcare services, and new technology shifting the skills needed in the healthcare workforce, a skills shortage in healthcare is growing rapidly.
Healthcare organizations must plan now for the future by undertaking comprehensive workforce planning, establishing a robust talent pipeline, focusing on retaining their current workers and appealing to the younger generations to step into those roles.
The Healthcare Talent Landscape
The healthcare industry faces an uphill battle when it comes to recruitment and staffing. A perfect storm of factors, including an aging population, workforce shortages across multiple disciplines, and a global pandemic that has stretched resources to the breaking point, has created immense challenges. Healthcare organizations must navigate a highly competitive recruitment landscape to attract and retain top talent. Additionally, new healthcare roles are emerging that require specialized skill sets, further complicating hiring efforts. In this constantly evolving climate, understanding the current healthcare recruitment landscape is crucial for organizations looking to build a strong, sustainable workforce.
Dig Deeper
How RPO Can Solve The Top Challenges In Healthcare Talent Acquisition
People are living longer, and as Baby Boomers age, the demand for health services, including home health services, long-term and aged care, is increasing. Chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes, cancer are becoming more common with nearly half of the American population suffering from a chronic illness.
An older and sicker population is putting pressure on healthcare workers, especially those in clinical roles like nurses, physicians, health aides and therapists. Plus, demand is high for cardiovascular technologists, clinical lab technicians and other allied healthcare professionals who operate specialized equipment to diagnose and treat chronic conditions. Attracting and retaining top healthcare talent has never been more competitive, with demand increasing in both acute care and community settings, including large health systems, public health organizations, tech companies moving into healthcare, travel nursing firms, long-term care facilities, the military, healthcare research, mental health agencies, insurance and managed care companies, and even other industries.
Talent Supply Can’t Keep Up with Demand
The increase in demand seems to coincide with a healthcare talent shortage. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that the country will face a shortage of 195,400 nurses by the 2031. Plus, a shift towards home-based care means the shortage of home health aides is projected to grow significantly. The BLS predicts that the number of openings for home health and personal health roles will increase 37% by 2028.
With home-based and long-term care growing, the U.S. healthcare system is also experiencing shortages for occupations like physical therapists and occupational therapists. Plus, these facilities find recruiting and retaining nursing assistants, care aides and direct care workers increasingly difficult due to low wages, demanding work and limited career advancement opportunities.
Retirement and Burnout Create Retention Issues
The challenges surrounding the skills shortage in healthcare are exacerbated by healthcare professionals exiting the workforce in droves. Experienced nurses, doctors and other clinicians are retiring and leaving patient care roles, resulting in the loss of crucial knowledge and experience for healthcare systems.
According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing the median age of a Registered Nurse (RN) is 46 years old. Plus, more than a quarter of RNs report they plan to retire or leave nursing over the next five years. The rates of RN turnover in the United States have ticked up over recent years, growing from 17% in 2017 to 26% by 2021.
Driven by the strain of the pandemic and a shrinking workforce, many healthcare workers are experiencing burnout. According to the Medscape National Physician Burnout and Suicide Report, the average burnout rates for nurses and physicians in the US is 40%.
Burnout also has an impact on patient care. According to Nursing Times, about half of midwives say they’re afraid of making a mistake because they’re exhausted.
Innovation is Shifting the Skills Shortage in Healthcare
As care delivery models have shifted, there is a growing need for nurses and staff with specialized skills and experience. Use of telemedicine and virtual care expanded during COVID-19 and is continuing to rise as a way to improve access to healthcare. Digital disruptor Amazon recently completed an acquisition of One Medical and is now offering a new model of digital “concierge” or “membership” healthcare.
In addition, new innovations in digital health (think personal health tracking apps or wearables), med-tech, genomics, precision medicine, AI and more are transforming healthcare and shifting the necessary skills in the healthcare workforce.
Rising Labor Costs are Adding to the Strain on Healthcare Organizations
With nationwide labor shortages and inflation, healthcare organizations face rising costs for salaries, benefits and contract staffing. In all industries, workers are requiring more competitive compensation, benefits and perks to be enticed. This puts a particular strain on healthcare organizations where staffing is literally a matter of life and death.
High turnover among certified nursing assistants drives up costs for long-term care facilities and impacts quality of care. In order to keep high patient care standards and staff shortages, the U.S. healthcare system relies heavily on costly contract and travel nurses and other providers which further drives up labor costs for hospitals. In fact, contract labor expenses have risen more than 250% over the past three years.
Addressing the Skills Shortage in Healthcare
Addressing the skills shortage in healthcare requires a multi-pronged approach—improving workforce planning, enhancing recruitment and retention efforts, and elevating the perception of healthcare careers for the next generation.
Workforce Planning
To effectively respond to the changing healthcare talent landscape, organizations must take proactive steps to plan for their future needs. The future will look different for every organization. Healthcare organizations in Florida and the Southwest, where there are large numbers of retirees, will have different staffing needs than organizations in trendy urban areas in the Pacific Northwest or East Coast where the population tends to be younger and healthier. Region also makes a difference in attracting candidates, as rural health systems are already struggling to fill positions. Healthcare organizations should know what their needs will be in the coming years and what challenges they’ll face attracting workers.
Data analytics is a valuable tool for workforce planning. The American Hospital Association recommends that organizations analyze data including current workforce demographics, potential future workforce requirements, and factors impacting the data, like the increasing popularity of walk-in clinics, telehealth services and digital healthcare models. Predictive and prescriptive analytics tools can help healthcare organizations plan for future needs and evaluate how different decisions will impact those hiring needs. According to SHRM, this type of workforce planning can save money by eliminating issues with understaffing and overstaffing. Predictions can provide organizations with a clearer view of how and when different talent gaps will impact them. Armed with that information, healthcare organizations can make informed decisions when it comes to forming partnerships, increasing retention and reaching out to younger workers.
Building Talent Pipelines
A key strategy for combating the the skills shortage in healthcare will be convincing more people to enter the healthcare industry. Too often, HR leaders at organizations only think of potential candidates through a narrow lens. They focus on the people who already work in the industry and who already have the education and skills to be a nurse, medical technician or phlebotomist. There aren’t enough people already in those pipelines to fill the talent gap. Healthcare organizations need to think broad and start focusing on the young people who are considering a career in healthcare. They need to start marketing to these candidates earlier than ever before.
The American Hospital Association recommends that healthcare organizations establish community pipelines by partnering with high schools, colleges and other academic institutions. Through these partnerships, healthcare organizations can start engaging with future candidates earlier than ever and help drive young people to the healthcare industry. Partnerships can also create more candidates in a geographical region with a specific set of skills. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, a partnership in Minnesota between the University of Minnesota and the VA Healthcare system helped expand enrollment in the university’s nursing program and increased the program’s focus on veteran care. The program ensures more graduates in Minnesota with the skills necessary to care for veterans. Healthcare organizations should form these partnerships strategically, using their workforce planning predictions to understand which types of positions will have the greatest demand and where these partnerships can have the biggest impact.
Focusing on Retention
HR leaders at healthcare organizations are grappling with the stresses the skills shortage in healthcare is creating for their current employees . Understaffing creates larger workloads and longer hours. According to CareerBuilder, 70% of nurses say they feel burnt out in their current job and more than half rate their stress level as “high.” According to Medscape, only 56% of nurses would choose their career if they had a chance to start over again. If current health care workers are stressed, burned out and regretting their career choice, that could harm the talent pipeline. Healthcare organizations cannot afford to lose younger nurses due to stress or burnout.
Healthcare organizations will have to face the challenges of burnout head on to retain their workers. Healthcare Dive offers tips for ways HR professionals can help, including making your staff aware of the signs of burnout and teaching self-care strategies. Wellness among the healthcare workforce must be a priority. Some healthcare organizations have created quiet rooms stocked with yoga mats and massage chairs where nurses can go during their shifts to take a break. CareerBuilder recommends offering a flexible work environment, encouraging exercise, establishing an open-door policy, offering mental health tools and focusing on continued education.
While an expensive option, contract healthcare providers can also help ease the burden on understaff facilities. PRN, or “pro re nata,” positions are growing in popularity throughout the entire healthcare industry. The positions are typically part-time, as needed, and many healthcare workers are turning to these roles for the flexibility, rather than taking full-time positions. Healthcare organizations can use PRN workers to cover understaffed shifts, which can lift some of the burden on permanent employees.
Appealing to Younger Workers
Healthcare organizations are competing for the best of the limited talent pool. To succeed in attracting candidates, healthcare organizations must build a strong employer brand and meet the needs of millennial and Generation Z workers.
What do millennials want? Countless writers have tried to answer that question, but Harvard Business Review reports millennials aren’t necessarily all that different from older generations. They want good managers, interesting work and the opportunity to learn and grow. Like many other generations, they want to make a positive impact and help solve social and environmental challenges. By its nature, a career in healthcare can provide that. One thing that does set millennials apart from earlier generations is an increased debt burden due to higher education costs. Some financial experts recommend that organizations consider new benefits packages that offer student debt repayment to lure millennial workers.
As for Generation Z, the oldest members are just starting to enter the workforce, but experts say to be prepared for a cohort of workers well versed in technology. According to Forbes, in addition to being technologically savvy, members of Gen Z are also entrepreneurial and serious-minded after watching the impact of the Great Recession, so organizations should expect creativity and offer continuing educational opportunities. Harvard Business Review recommends reaching Gen Z candidates where they are—on mobile devices. Authenticity and personalization are also important to this segment of the workforce, as they’ve grown up bombarded with personalized advertisements online.
Engaging an Expert to Tackle the Skills Shortage in Healthcare
As they work to manage the growing skills shortage in healthcare, healthcare organizations are turning to experts in healthcare RPO, MSP and Total Workforce Solutions for healthcare staffing support. As you plan for the future, a talent partner can help provide a view of the whole talent spectrum, finding the right mix of both full-time and contingent workers. As the gig economy grows in popularity and more healthcare workers turn to contingent work, a talent acquisition partner can also ensure compliance on legal issues. Healthcare organizations should seek out partners with the right experience to tackle the specific needs of the industry.
A partner with a depth of data analytics experience can help develop a unique plan that addresses the needs, region and demographics of your individual healthcare organization. Data expertise can also help organizations determine why current employees leave and predict which changes could make the biggest differences in employee retention.
Healthcare organizations should also look for a partner with strong experience in building candidate-centered application processes and employer branding. As healthcare organizations compete for talent, a candidate-centered process and strong employer brand will help bring in the millennial and Gen Z workers.
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Our comprehensive buyer’s guide for RPO—everything you need to know
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By Simon Wright, Global Head of Talent Advisory Consulting
The workforce skills landscape is transforming at blinding speed. Automation, AI, sustainability initiatives, demographic shifts—global forces are conspiring to make skills gaps and talent shortages more acute by the day. Don’t think it’s moving that fast? Well, the World Economic Forum predicts that a jaw-dropping 85 million jobs could sit vacant by 2030, resulting in $8.5 trillion in lost revenue.
The very meaning of “skills” is shifting beneath our feet. Skills requirements have already changed 25% since 2015, and experts forecast 65% more change by 2030. However, companies still rely heavily on degrees and experience over skills when it comes to making hiring decisions. No wonder we’re careening towards a global skills crisis.
PeopleScout partnered with skills-based workforce management platform provider Spotted Zebra to survey over 100 senior HR and talent acquisition leaders globally, plus over 2,000 employees worldwide, to compare perspectives. Our new research report, The Skills Crisis Countdown, maps the skills landscape and diagnoses the disconnects between employers and their workforce.
Read on for some key findings from our report.
HR Leaders are Ill-Prepared for the Skills Crisis
According to a study by PwC, 40% of global CEOs believe their business will be economically unviable in 10 years unless they reinvent for the future. Our study revealed that nine out of 10 HR leaders believe that up to 50% of their workforce will require new skills to effectively perform their job in the next five years. Yet, when asked if they are currently undergoing or planning a workforce transformation initiative in the next three years, nearly half (45%) of HR leaders admit to having no plans to undertake one.
So, in other words, half of employees will soon be underprepared for the future, but most companies have no strategy in place to address the issue.
According to LinkedIn, 84% of members are in occupations that could have at least one quarter of their core skills affected by generative AI (GAI) technologies, like ChatGPT. So, how are HR leaders preparing for this digital transformation and the AI era? Shockingly, a full third (34%) say they have no preparations in place to prepare for new technologies. Those who are preparing emphasize bringing in outside talent rather than reskilling existing employees.
Industry Composition by GAI Segment Percentage of LinkedIn Members by Industry
(Source: LinkedIn Economic Graph Research Institute)
This is likely because they lack an understanding of the skills they have within their existing workforce. Our data revealed that 68% of organizations identify skills from manager feedback, which is highly subjective. So, it’s no surprise that 56% of employees think their skills are underutilized in their current roles, and 61% think there are other roles in their organization where their skills could be utilized.
An unprecedented skills revolution is barreling down the tracks, but companies are fast asleep at the switch. It’s time to wake up and get employees future-ready or risk a global skills crisis and talent scarcity for decades to come.
Digital & Tech Skills Gaps are Widening but Tech Skills are Viewed as Unimportant
Both employers and employees dangerously underestimate the importance of tech and digital skills. In our survey, both parties listed tech and digital literacy skills with low importance. With the skyrocketing demand for tech and digital talent, this does not bode well.
Mobile apps, ecommerce and digital transformation have made technology integral to every corporate strategy. However, supply isn’t keeping up with demand. McKinsey analyzed 3.5 million job postings in high-tech fields and found there’s a wide divide between the demand for tech and digital skills and the qualified talent availability. The most sought-after skills have less than half as many qualified professionals per posting compared to average global figures.
No wonder 63% of HR leaders in our survey admit they struggle to recruit the skills they need. Closing tech and digital skills gaps through recruitment alone is no longer sufficient. So, we were concerned when our research showed that 73% of the workforce haven’t been offered opportunities to reskill.
Organizations must invest in helping their employees evolve their skills via reskilling and internal mobility to cultivate digital and tech literacy across their entire workforce.
Case Study: Reskilling in Action
The Challenge:
A large global financial services company needed to undertake a major digital transformation program. The organization needed to acquire key digital and tech skills while leveraging the existing company knowledge of employees in declining customer service roles by reskilling them.
Previous efforts by the organization to assess employees’ suitability for reskilling were led internally and included multiple, time-consuming line manager interviews. Of even greater concern, around a quarter of those who began the reskilling program dropped out.
The Solution:
The bank worked with their long-time RPO partner, PeopleScout, and Spotted Zebra to assess customer service staff in bank branches and call centers to find ideal candidates for its tech and digital skilling program. Skills profiles were created for tech roles, which employees were assessed against to find the best fit.
The Results:
Redeployed 150 people, saving over $2.5M in exit costs
Saved over $350,000 in training and development costs
Reduced time investment by hiring managers
Reduced the reskilling cost-per-person by 70%
Employees Don’t Feel Confident in their Skills for the Future
A third (34%) of workers have doubts about how their skills will keep pace with new technology and automation. Meanwhile, just 17% of organizations are offering targeted reskilling programs for existing employees.
Where are HR Leaders Deploying Skills-Based Practices?
(Source: PeopleScout and Spotted Zebra)
This imbalance spells disaster. As change overwhelms existing skill sets, most workers will begin to feel unsure of their career paths or left struggling to stay relevant.
Investing in reskilling makes solid business sense. We must bridge the gap between workers anxiously facing uncertainty and leaders failing to invest in their resilience. HR leaders who empower their workforce with adaptable skill sets today will drive continued success in times of swift and sweeping change.
Finding a Talent Partner to Support Your Skills Transformation
The agility to match emerging skill requirements will soon become a competitive necessity. If you haven’t started your skills-based transformation, now is the time.
In our survey, one in two HR leaders admitted to a lack of understanding of skills-based practices. If you’re struggling to understand how to take advantage of skills-based practices in your organization, PeopleScout is here to be your guide.
As a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) partner, we can help you understand the skills within your existing workforce as well as the external market supply and demand. We offer solutions across the skills agenda, from skills-based talent intelligence and market insights, building skills frameworks, and creating skills-based success profiles to redesigning recruitment processes, skills-based hiring strategies, and helping you maximize the potential of your existing workforce.
To learn more about PeopleScout’s skills-focused talent solutions, get in touch.
By Simon Wright, Head of Global Talent Advisory Consulting
We are in one of the most transformative periods in the history of work. Between technological disruptions, societal shifts and global events, the talent landscape five years from now will likely look very different than it does today. However, even in times of uncertainty, we can discern key trends that will impact the way organizations source, recruit and retain talent.
As a leading talent solutions provider, PeopleScout has a unique vantage point to view the forces shaping the future of work. Based on our experience and industry insights, we believe there are eight core areas talent acquisition leaders should embrace in 2024 to up-level their strategic importance within the business.
1. Talent Leaders Will Look to New Models to Ride the Economic Waves
The power balance has now shifted back to the employer amidst a tight labor market, fewer vacancies and a cost-of-living crisis. But if you think it’s time to pause investment in your talent programs, think again.
Talent acquisition teams shrunk during COVID-19 and then grew quickly as part of the bounce back only to shed jobs again this past year. With continued uncertainty, TA leaders must showcase the value they bring to business by minimizing the impacts of economic fluctuations.
It’s time to leave behind the boom and bust and embrace agility through a strategic approach to workforce planning and forecasting. Talent solutions like recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), including modular RPO solutions, offer responsiveness to help stabilize operational delivery amidst unpredictable economic waves.
2. Business Transformation Will Shape the Workforce
The specific skills and capabilities companies need are shifting rapidly, which means the jobs and roles employers need to fill are changing too. According to McKinsey research, one-third of new jobs created in the U.S. in the past 25 years were types that barely existed previously, particularly in high-demand areas like data analytics, software development and renewable energy. According to Totaljobs, despite a general slowdown in hiring, the demand for green jobs continues to go up, skyrocketing by 677% between 2019 and 2023.
However, this business transformation is being hampered by the lack of talent and relevant skills. Economic, social and labor market changes are evolving faster than workforce training and development systems can keep pace. There simply aren’t enough workers with experience in emerging fields and new technologies.
TA leaders must work proactively to build the reputation and influence of their employer brand with potential talent now—ahead of the hiring they need to do in the future. This means being able to recruit the best talent in the market, not just the best talent in your pipeline. Investing in candidate nurturing and employer branding strategies now will ensure organizations can hire first—and fast—when the time comes.
3. Employees Will Continue to Reevaluate Their Relationship with Work
TA leaders must be the eyes and ears for their organization, tuning in to the candidate market and shaping the employer value proposition (EVP) to meet the changing needs and expectations of candidates. Today’s employees are demanding more, and the one-size-fits-all EVP approach must evolve to keep up.
Organizations that refresh their EVP with a more human-centric approach that recognizes employees as people, not just workers, will go beyond traditional offerings to provide exceptional life experiences that match employee needs. Delivering a positive emotional connection will be crucial for improving retention, overcoming the productivity vacuum and attracting quality talent in 2024.
4. Data Will Be the Key to Overcoming Talent Scarcity
The labor market has shrunk due to the retirement of Baby Boomers, and companies face an enormous brain drain of institutional expertise. Not only is the upcoming population smaller and not replacing the Boomers who are leaving the workforce, but they lack the some of the soft skills of the departing generation. With this double depletion at play, organizations will need to work hard to attract and train Gen Z in order to keep their workforce development on track for the future.
Additionally, long-term illness, including lingering complications from COVID-19, has sidelined many working-age adults. The latest ONS data shows that the number of people economically inactive because of long-term sickness is now over 2.5 million in the UK alone.
The key to reducing the impact of talent scarcity in 2024 is data. It’s time for TA leaders to treat talent intelligence as business intelligence, bringing it to the C-suite to drive decision making and inform strategy. Organizations must leverage data to understand both internal and external talent pools, maximizing ROI on talent attraction and retention efforts.
5. Skills-Based Practices Will Take Center Stage
In order to keep pace with changing roles and dwindling talent pools, leading organizations are taking a proactive and holistic approach to adapting their workforces. They are investing in upskilling and reskilling programs while also leveraging RPO partners to find professionals with the most in-demand and future-proof skills.
More organizations will look to expand candidate pools and tap into diverse skill sets through skills-based recruitment. To do this, organizations must evolve their candidate assessment practices to focus on skills rather than credentials or pedigree. We’ll see more organizations follow the likes of Google and drop their university degree requirements. This will have the added benefit of promoting greater diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the workplace.
6. Internal Mobility Will Receive Big Investment
More than a third (36%) of HR professionals surveyed identified employee retention as a priority in 2024. Internal mobility will become the key to retention as well as filling open roles and skills gaps. Focus will shift from building external talent pools to internal talent pools, putting methods in place to identify transferable skills that can be boosted to support business transformation.
We saw an uptick in labor hoarding in 2023 talent trends. In 2024, organizations must invest in transforming the skills of the workers they’ve kept on board in order to ensure they’re ready for what’s on the horizon.
In 2024, career moves won’t take a linear path but will weave across departments and disciplines, providing workers with variety and rewarding work. Organizations must train hiring managers to look at candidates, not just for their fit for a specific role, but for the value they can bring to the organization.
Organizations will look to capitalize on AI-powered features to do the heavy lifting so their teams can focus on more valuable recruiting activities. TA leaders should look to technology to augment human touches throughout the candidate experience, to identify opportunities for streamlining through automation, and to help them better interrogate data for a more agile resourcing model.
This is also an opportunity for TA leaders to demonstrate they can deliver digital transformation and deliver ROI from these investments. This has been a criticism of talent acquisition and HR in the past, and it’s time to dispel that narrative.
8. AI Fever Will Hit an All-Time High
And finally, it wouldn’t be a 2024 talent acquisition forecast without a mention of AI. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools, like ChatGPT, were on the tip of our tongues in 2023. As organizations grapple with the ethics of AI, most will succumb to the transformative potential and begin to test and experiment with how AI can benefit their workforce and operations in 2024.
The role of technology will keep evolving within talent acquisition, but it’s primed to have a pivotal role in streamlining recruitment tasks and improving efficiency in everything from screening to assessments to interview scheduling.
Organizations should take a principled approach to leveraging AI and automation to augment recruiting, while ensuring human oversight and care for people remains central. Starting with a small project or two will clear the mist so you can see clearly where AI will add value to your recruitment tech stack and candidate experience.
The Importance of the Right Talent Partner to Help You Ride the Waves
The future of work holds exciting potential, but also some uncertainty. However, while individual trends are difficult to predict, TA leaders that embrace agility, skills practices and tech innovation will find themselves in a strong position to prove their value in driving business performance. As your talent partner, PeopleScout will be ready to support, challenge and inspire you for whatever lies ahead.
By staying on top of key shifts like these and working with an expert talent solutions provider like PeopleScout, companies can build workforces with the skills, mindsets and diversity of experiences to thrive in the next era of business.
Church of England: Full-Scale Recruitment Process Review Through a DE&I Lens
The Church of England turned to PeopleScout to help them review and co-create a future-proof recruitment process strategy to support them in recruiting people who reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.
Situation
The Church of England (C of E) and its seven National Church Institutions (NCIs) have made great progress already in creating a diverse, fair, and unbiased recruitment processes. But, like most organizations, they face unique challenges. The main one being the barriers which come with being a faith and mission-based organization, coupled with the external perception of the Church. With the progress they had already made, the C of E were looking to accelerate the pace of change and take this to the next level, which is where PeopleScout came in.
Solution
The Church of England engaged PeopleScout to execute a recruitment process review through a diversity, equality and inclusion lens (DE&I) with the goal of uncovering further opportunities, including:
A forensic deep dive of over 80 internal documents spanning role creation, assessment policy, organizational values, and DE&I training.
DE&I data analysis of C of E’s recruitment processes focusing on progression and engagement.
Deep immersion in the organization and connection with its members to understand what is happening on the ground through discovery interviews and focus groups, winning hearts and minds along the way.
Regular consultative check-ins with the core team to ensure they are involved at each step of the way so they can own the recommendations.
Co-creating a vision of what the future can look like with an actionable roadmap decided by current C of E employees.
Results
Examples of some of our recommendations include:
Create a competency/behavior library and corresponding bank of interview questions to support hiring managers when designing role profiles, job descriptions and interviews for their roles.
Revisit the Church of England’s brand visibility, marketing strategy and transparency based on feedback from their new joiners in order to better attract candidates from all backgrounds and religious orientations.
Create clarity around instructions for filling out application forms to allow more consistency in response quality from candidates (e.g., using example responses).
Keeping interview panels to a maximum of two or three members from C of E to reduce candidate anxiety.
Create a central onboarding checklist to ensure everyone receives the same support when joining their role in any of the NCIs.
With the support of PeopleScout, Church of England’s National Church Institutions now have:
Clarity over their current strengths in diverse recruitment to roll out wider, as well as opportunities for improvement
Actionable, realistic, tailored recommendations for creating change in their unique organization
A co-created roadmap with both quick wins and long-term strategy to mobilize change immediately whilst maintaining momentum
Out-of-the-box ideas for talent attraction and candidate experience to boost the diversity of new joiners
Support and buy in from key stakeholders and employee resource groups so that any actions can have a lasting embedded impact
At a Glance
COMPANY Church of England
INDUSTRY Public Sector
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Recruitment Process Outsourcing
ABOUT CHURCH OF ENGLAND The seven National Church Institutions (NCIs) work together at an international and national level, supporting the ministries of the Church.
The Recruitment Handbook for Financial Services Talent
The financial services industry faces immense recruitment challenges. With skills gaps persisting, economic uncertainties complicating hiring, and cultural perceptions pushing away young talent, talent leaders need solutions.
That’s why we created The Recruitment Handbook for Financial Services Talent.
In this information-packed guide, you’ll discover:
The latest global trends impacting financial services hiring so you can plan accordingly
4 key recruitment strategies to solve your biggest hiring obstacles
Real-world examples and case studies of these strategies in action with RPO
Whether you need to build your employer brand, enhance your candidate experience, upskill employees or leverage better sourcing techniques, this handbook has tactics you can implement right away.
By Simon Wright, Global Head of Talent Advisory Consulting
Earlier in 2023, we highlighted six key areas that would impact how companies attract, retain and develop talent. With the year wrapping up, we’re revisiting these critical topics to examine what transpired in the talent landscape and what may be on the horizon for 2024.
From closing persistent skills gaps to offering more work flexibility, companies continue to face pressing talent challenges. Economic fluctuations have led some employers to pull back on hiring and remote work, while others doubled down on upskilling programs and expanded their talent pools.
In the following review, we trace how the 2023 predictions played out amidst an uncertain economy and ever-evolving workplace.
1. Closing Skills Gaps
What We Said:
With rapidly evolving technologies requiring new skills, companies are making upskilling and reskilling their workforce top priorities. Most employees feel unprepared for future jobs, so it’s important for organizations to invest in development to retain employees, build confidence, and help them adapt to changing business priorities.
What We Saw:
Skills gaps, and the upskilling and reskilling that must happen in order to close them, are still very much top of mind for HR leaders. The economic slowdown has increased candidate availability, so in the short term there has been more tech talent available, for example. But long term, there is still a skills crisis, and organizations are largely yet to shift to skills-based practices.
We’ve seen front-runner organizations investing in skills development initiatives to grow the workforce they need. For example, Amazon’s program Career Choice is part of a wider initiative to invest over $1.2 billion by 2025 to provide 300,000 U.S. workers with the training they need to pursue careers in whatever field they choose.
The average shelf-life of skills is now less than five years. So, the skills conversation is only going to get louder. If the World Economic Forum’s prediction is correct that over 85 million jobs will go unfilled by 2030 due to a lack of skilled talent, resulting in $8.5 trillion (USD) in annual lost revenues, then this is the most pressing issue facing talent leaders today.
2. Offering More Flexibility
What We Said:
Amidst the acceleration of remote work, companies are facing mounting pressure to offer greater location and schedule flexibility to attract and retain talent.
What We Saw:
The return to the office debate is still raging. Employees want greater flexibility, but more and more employers are pulling people back into the office. Even Zoom, the video communications company that helps us all work from home, announced in August that it will start tightening its restrictions on remote work. Amazon, Disney and more have all reduced remote-work days.
While power has shifted back to the employer, this issue won’t go away. If you really think your employees love coming to the office just because you’ve introduced free snacks, you don’t understand what flexibility means to your workers. Flexibility is not just about where you work. True flexibility is about giving more autonomy to your employees about the kinds of work they do and when and where they do it.
3. Shifting to Contingent Workers
What We Said:
As the desire for work flexibility drives more professionals into freelance and contract roles, organizations are increasingly utilizing these temporary workers to fill pressing skills gaps and specific project needs while maintaining financial and strategic workforce flexibility.
What We Saw:
The economic uncertainty this year has made organizations less likely to make permanent hires. Plus, freelancers, consultants and contractors have developed into an essential part of the workforce as skills requirements become more complex. Maintaining a mix of traditional and flexible talent is crucial for businesses to stay ahead in today’s dynamic climate.
With the enormous interest in ChatGPT and generative AI, it’s not a stretch to think the pace of business transformation will only accelerate in 2024. And demand for contingent workers will continue to rise. Indeed, according to Ceridian, 65% of organizations plan to increase their reliance on contingent workers in the next two years.
4. Tapping into New Talent Pools
What We Said:
Facing workforce shortages, organizations are expanding their applicant pool by targeting untapped talent like Generation Z, unretiring Baby Boomers and boomeranging ex-employees.
What We Saw:
In 2023, the UK government launched a “returnership” initiative to inspire those over the age of 50 to come back to work. The goal is to help older workers retrain and learn new skills, providing them with a roadmap back to the workplace and encouraging organizations to hire them.
We also saw organizations turn their attention to the talent pool sitting right under their noses. Internal mobility was a hot topic for talent leaders in 2023 as recruiting new talent became more and more challenging and costly.
We were also reintroduced to the concept of labor hoarding, a term coined in the 1960s. This practice refers to organizations forgoing head-count reductions now, so they’re prepared when business picks up. In an era of labor shortages, organizations are keeping their workforces to avoid the risk of losing good talent to a competitor and to skip the costs associated with hiring again.
5. Rallying Around the Mission
What We Said:
Our Inside the Candidate Experience research revealed that for 50% of candidates, an organization’s mission and purpose are a key influence on their decision to apply. Yet, when evaluating career sites, we found details on the mission or purpose of the organization less than half (48%) of the time.
What We Saw:
Employees are more dedicated than ever to finding an employer that shares their values and offers them a sense of purpose. However, workers within organizations that lack a sincere commitment to improving the community and supporting climate initiatives often report disengagement.
According to Gallup data from June 2023, 59% of global workers say they’re not engaged at work. This is worrying as we move into a labor market that favors employers, as they will inevitably become less motivated to keep their employees engaged. Yet, a key reason why someone quiet quits hasn’t changed—and it’s down to a lack of connection to the company culture and purpose.
A lack of engagement in the workforce is a leading factor in the productivity vacuum. Going into 2024, my hope is HR leaders will go beyond simply thinking about wellbeing to view their employees as whole people—not just workers. Updating your employee value proposition (EVP) to be more human-focused can help strike the right balance between compassion and business interests. Shifting to a Personal Value Proposition (PVP), and customizing offerings so that each employee feels valued as an individual, can help in fostering a positive emotional connection.
Despite economic uncertainty, business leaders foresee revenue growth in the coming year, but may need flexible and agile workforces achieved through contingent staffing to meet their top challenge of filling critical roles amidst a shifting talent landscape.
What We Saw:
We saw an increase in talent acquisition teams looking for quick wins. At PeopleScout, we are investing heavily in talent solutions designed to boost agility for employers of all sizes and across all industries. This includes offerings like our Amplifiers and PeopleScout Accelerate solutions launched this year.
Amplifiers provide modular, targeted recruitment process outsourcing tailored to specific hiring needs. Clients can implement RPO support for just part of the talent acquisition lifecycle, whether that’s filling the top of the hiring funnel with high volumes of qualified talent or gaining deeper insights to guide strategic workforce decisions. This “as-needed” model is ideal for companies that want to remain nimble.
Additionally, our PeopleScout Accelerate technology-enhanced RPO solution is purpose-built for fast-scaling organizations that need to ramp up recruiting quickly. We can implement PeopleScout Accelerate in just two weeks, providing access to our proven recruitment methodologies and our industry-leading Affinix talent acquisition technology suite right out of the gate.
As we close the books on 2023, it’s clear the talent landscape continues to shift in new and uncertain directions. In the coming year, agile organizations that invest in the longevity of their workforce and truly connect with their people on a human level will maintain an edge. Rather than recoiling from change, forward-thinking talent leaders have an opportunity to guide their organization’s evolution. Now is the time to build workforces that can pivot on a dime while staying true to their purpose.
The secret lies in your employer value proposition (EVP).
Your EVP must place individual employees firmly at the heart of their own experience. This new approach to EVP—a Personal Value Proposition or PVP—is designed to resonate with employees as unique individuals with distinct motivations and aspirations.
Job seekers can see right through generic employer brands nowadays. Candidates crave authenticity and want to connect with a company’s true culture before joining. So, how can you craft an employer brand that both resonates with individual job seekers and showcases what your organization is authentically all about?
Here are six key areas today’s talent looks for when evaluating an employer brand’s authenticity.
6 Signs of an Authentic Employer Brand & EVP
Keep these priorities front and center as you shape your EVP to align both with your organizational priorities and employee needs.
1. Meaningful Connections
What Candidates Want:
In today’s job market, candidates aren’t just looking for a job—they want a workplace that helps them feel truly engaged and connected. A leading employer brand should attract top talent by cultivating genuine connection with peers, leaders and the overarching mission.
What Employers Should Show:
In our research report, Inside the Candidate Experience, we found that mission and purpose is a top three consideration for job seekers looking for a new job. Yet, less than half of employer show information about this on their career site.
By highlighting your organizational mission, you help candidates make an emotional connection to your employer brand. Amp up the authenticity through storytelling—how individual employees live your mission through their work, how your organizational policies reflect your brand purpose, how new hires can expect to make an impact when they join.
Employees are seeking work experiences that help them realize their potential beyond just job tasks. Workers are taking more control of their own professional trajectories, seeking opportunities that offer autonomy and alignment with their skills, passions and personal circumstances.
Work is no longer confined to a single job or career path. Instead, it is seen as a series of opportunities that facilitate personal and professional growth.
What Employers Show:
Development opportunities like mentorship programs, leadership workshops and reskilling bootcamps to support internal mobility are top of mind for employees—especially Gen Z. Training should address both hard skills (like coding, certifications or licenses and statistical analysis) and soft skills (like resilience, relationship building and empathy). However, we find that organizations don’t do enough to show the impact of this training on individuals and their personal and professional growth.
You can show this impact authentically by bringing it to life through telling the career stories of your employees. Watching a video of an employee sharing how they were able to go through a reskilling program and join a different department is far more powerful for a candidate than just reading about the program.
Here’s an example from Adobe showcasing their employees’ career paths on social with a global #AdobeForAll celebration.
Flexibility should no longer be the domain of people with children. Everyone wants more flexibility in where, when and how they work. It could be about caring responsibilities for parents, or it could just be having the time and space to pursue passions outside of work. Ultimately, this issue is about organizations demonstrating they trust their people and providing autonomy where possible.
What Employers Show:
Employees who are granted time and space to pursue their passions bring fresh energy, insight and creativity to the job. Yet, for our Inside the Candidate Experience report we audited the career sites of over 215 organizations and found that information on flexible working and work/life balance is mentioned just over half the time.
Help candidates experience this authentically by profiling employees who are embracing flexible work patterns. This helps them see how a role can fit into their own life. By understanding life outside work directly fuels innovative excellence within it, organizations can architect roles that let people show up as their best and truest selves every day.
4. Well-Being & Psychological Safety
What Candidates Want:
If this past era has taught us anything, it’s that employees require our care as much as any business strategy. The Great Resignation was fueled by individuals reprioritizing their well-being over their next promotion or paycheck. And Quiet Quitting is often the result of employees losing psychological safety and no longer seeing a return on their engagement.
To communicate to candidates that your focus on well-being is more than lip service, include information on specific actions your organization is taking to support employees whether that’s wellness benefits or financial support programs. Don’t just state you have work-life balance programs—showcase how you empower people to utilize them through things like extra PTO days around major life events and even showing leaders modeling using your well-being perks to set the tone.
5. Diverse & Inclusive Environments
What Candidates Want:
Employees want to be a part of an organizations that celebrates true diversity, promotes cultural intelligence and fosters a workplace where multiple traditions, rituals and ways of thinking lead to innovation. These conscious cultures go beyond attracting candidates from underrepresented groups. They amplify their voices and put them into positions to reshape industry norms altogether. When asked how hearing from actual employees would influence their job search 86% of job seekers said they value stories from employees.
What Employers Show:
We found that 35% of organizations don’t feature a diverse group of real employees on their career sites. In addition, 60% of career sites don’t contain any video content in which employees share their personal journeys and stories. Often, we see that organizations mention their employee resource groups (ERGs) but fail to share the work these groups are doing and the impact they make within the organization and community. Employees want to see action, not virtue signalling.
Candidates find the voice of an average employee more credible than what companies say about themselves, so featuring real employee stories throughout the candidate experience is a proven way to engage candidates on an emotional level, building authenticity and brand trust.
Employees are becoming more socially conscious and looking for employers that provide avenues for engagement with environment social governance (ESG) issues, with as many as 80% of workers in some industries saying that community and sustainability concerns play a role in whether they will resign from or remain at certain organizations. Two-thirds of candidates use social media to research companies during their job search, and they will look to your posts to see how your organization is backing up its promises.
What Employers Show:
Employers must take purpose beyond platitudes. Yet, we found that a one in three organizations are not posting employer brand related content to their social channels at least on a week.
A great example is Ben & Jerry’s. The company actively engages in social justice campaigns like Advancement Project, including on their social media channels, and gives employees time off to volunteer in community projects.
Include social media posts of photos and videos of corporate volunteer activities or ERG-sponsored events. Seeing images of real employees giving back makes your purpose-driven culture tangible for candidates. Even a corporate post of an individual employee who ran a marathon in support a charity close to their heart can show what purposeful empowerment looks like at the individual level.
The Power of Storytelling for an Authentic Employer Brand
Injecting authenticity into your employer brand is about moving past broad statements of intent, to the actions that back it up. Follow the old adage—show, don’t tell.
Your brand should remain as dynamic as your people. Don’t shy away from evolution when new priorities emerge. So be bold, stay real, and let your employer brand reflect what truly makes your organization shine.
