Category: Talent Technology

Imagine your day as a lead recruiter for a major retailer. You have delivered successful results, but sometimes you get bogged down with small details. By the end of this month, you need to fill 27 requisitions for store managers and customer service supervisors – a pretty normal workload that you’re used to.

At 8 a.m., you look at a weekly dashboard report sent by your VP that describes how you are performing against monthly recruiting goals. You are doing well, but you have to turn it up a bit more. Ten of your requisitions are new, five are in the interview stage and eight are in the offer stage. You know how to manage this – you are a pro – but there is so much to do.

From 8:21 until 10:59 a.m., you respond to several calls, filter so many resumes you lose track, and perform a couple phone screens; it makes it hard to take a minute and plan with this type of pace.

By 3 p.m., the day has flown by and you now need to spend time reviewing your activity log for the day. In an ideal world, you’d clear your plate of your morning tasks and instead spend time building candidate relationships. However, you remind yourself that this type of pace and workload is true for most recruiters.

At 4:30 p.m., you receive some predictions from your finance team of where you need to shift your focus. This will help you manage your time better, but to be honest the data would have been more helpful if you had received it last month. You love reading the color-coded strike zone reports though and take note of how long it is taking to fill some of your harder-to-fill roles.

By 5:30 p.m., you leave feeling like you’ve done your best to tackle the day and made some real progress. You are putting out fires and making everything work, but what would be really helpful would be a prescription telling you what and where to attack each day to help you achieve even better results and be more efficient.

Maybe your prescription could look something like the following:

Prescriptive Analytics is Next

In our story, the recruiter received several different types of information, but the amount of disparate data was still unhelpful in the recruiter’s daily work. What our recruiter needed was some form of prescriptive analytics metrics to figure out where to focus their time.

What does prescriptive mean in the context of analytics? Prescriptive analytics solutions make predictions and answer questions related to “what to do” and why some action will take place. Prescriptive analytic output also delivers results from different options to help support various decision paths.

Prescriptive analytics solutions are only beginning to enter the mainstream world of talent acquisition. Rob Wells, managing director of Workday in Australia and New Zealand said, “The most innovative companies are relying on analytics in their HR programs and those that are implementing prescriptive analytics will reap the biggest rewards.” Gartner predicts that the prescriptive analytics software market will reach $1.1 billion by 2019. InformationWeek lists resource optimization, broadly termed as matching resources such as people and goods with an organization’s needs (e.g. talent acquisition), as a strong target for growth.

Prescriptive analytics is more easily understood in context with its relationship to descriptive and predictive analytics.

Predictive vs. Prescriptive Analytics

While predictive and prescriptive analytics sound alike, prescriptive analytics is the more advanced solution of the two. Prescriptive analytics builds on predictive analytics forecasts and transitional analytics solutions such as diagnostic analytics to evolve toward overall better decisions.

Predictive analytics today is more widely deployed. Predictive analytics uses data to find patterns and then uses that information to make forecasts that can shorten the recruiting process and produce stronger hires. While predictive solutions produce forecasts based on existing data, prescriptive solutions answer problems. As Gartner states, companies should ask “What can we do to make ____ happen” – prescriptive analytics helps answer that question.

Talent Analytics Adoption: Most, Some, Few

Descriptive Analytics

Receiving detailed data on past behavior equates to descriptive analytics. Most companies have this today.

Most organizations, up to 90 percent, are using some type of basic analytics function such as descriptive analytics. This is a common activity in talent acquisition as well. Descriptive analytics activities in talent acquisition looks at activity related to candidate generation, like the volume of candidates, time-to-close, cost of the candidate search and source-of-hire.

Predictive Analytics

Reviewing predictions of what might happen is predictive analytics. Some companies have this today.

Giant retailers such as Amazon are known for their predictive analytics solutions that manage data, inventory and customer needs. Some recruiters in talent acquisition have also begun to use predictive analytics tools. Predictive analytics throughout the sourcing process is also integrated into PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology, Affinix.

Prescriptive Analytics

Knowing where to act and how to move in a specific way is prescriptive analytics. Few companies have this today.

The healthcare industry has seen success using prescriptive analytics. One company implemented a prescriptive analytics solution that analyzed the number of obese patients and then added cholesterol and diabetes risk levels to customize specific treatments. A few early possibilities are evolving for prescriptive analytics in talent acquisition. Prescriptive analytics could help predict learning paths for employees, helping to extend their tenure at an organization. Recruiters can also anticipate when candidates might ghost an opportunity – known as a candidate’s joining probability – and get a prescribed solution to fix the situation.

Challenges

As prescriptive analytics models enter the talent acquisition world, what are some implementation challenges to keep in mind?

• Price. Right now solutions are targeted and priced more for larger organizations.
• Talent. Many in-house analytics teams may not have enough people with the right skills to implement a prescriptive analytics solution. In fact many organizations are still struggling with adopting predictive.
• Buy-In. Organizational buy-in to implement a solution like prescriptive analytics is critical. Many organizations are still in the consideration stage for predictive analytics as mentioned and are not ready for prescriptive analytics offerings.

Preparing Your Prescription

How should you prepare for the use of prescriptive analytics? Regardless of your organization’s readiness for prescriptive analytics, you should keep the following planning tips in mind:

• Review your current analytics capabilities. Where is your organization in its analytics “journey?” Are you delivering complex or more simple descriptive analytics functions today?
• Evolve your analytics business case. What problems can you solve today, what would you like to solve in the future? What tools will help you meet different challenges?
• Assess potential vendors. Some vendors may say they are selling prescriptive analytics solutions but are not. Terminology across AI, machine learning and different analytics terms is sometimes misused. Do your due diligence to find out if your vendor can deliver the results you need.

Key Takeaways

• Prescriptive analytics is the most advanced stage of business analytics currently available after descriptive and predictive analytics solutions.
• While prescriptive analytics may not be used widely in talent acquisition, the potential for this next-generation analytics offering is promising.
• To prepare for prescriptive analytics implementation, assess your company’s existing analytics challenges and determine if prospective vendors are prepared to help you with the analytics problems you want to solve.

David Wilkinson spends a lot of time in airplanes, and that’s not just because he works for Boeing. In global talent acquisition at the aerospace giant, he has lived and worked in London and Dubai and now leads his team from Mesa, Arizona in the U.S. While a lot of people talk about globalizing talent acquisition, David actually lives it.

Regardless of whether he is looking towards the future of Boeing in the deserts of the U.S., the drizzle of the UK or the heat of the UAE, he is a talent champion. He’s also a member of the PeopleScout community. For this issue of PeopleScout NEXT, we caught up with David on an early morning call to learn about his insights on the future of talent acquisition.

What is the mission of Boeing Global Talent Acquisition?

Our journey is to become global talent champions. To us, that means delivering best-in-class solutions that unleash the full potential of Boeing’s people, products and services.

I’m really excited by that mission because it requires us to celebrate and champion talent at every opportunity. It also acknowledges the fact that it is a competition for talent, and we’re here to win.

What are some of your priorities as your team looks to the future?

The two things that I really think are the needle movers for us are operating globally and embracing an intentional use of talent technology. We are excited to work with PeopleScout and other valued partners in pursuit of those goals.

One of our main priorities is evolving our approach to talent technology. We’re working towards a holistic end-to-end technology strategy that will use data-driven insights to inform our experience and activities. I’m hoping that strategy will enable our teams to deliver the best experience every time, at every touch point.

What tools, methods and strategies are you exploring to achieve your approach to talent technology?

For me, the single greatest opportunity is technology. It’s also our single greatest dependency.

We’re adopting Workday globally. Given our scale, this is a significant endeavor. It’s been a two-year project, and we’re going to implement in 2019. So, our focus is on maximizing every opportunity that this change offers.

I see great potential for more intentional tools usage. When you implement a brand-new technology, you can be more intentional about that technology and the way you use your tools, processes and systems. What does that entail for Boeing talent acquisition? It means looking at artificial intelligence, business automation, access to real-time data and more.

We also see opportunities in technology to enable our global journey. Working in talent acquisition in London for eight years, Dubai for 10 years and now the U.S., I’ve learned that there are very, very few truly global tools. What’s big in the U.S. might not be big in Europe and may not be used at all in Asia, for example. This is an important opportunity for us and one that I believe will truly impact the candidate experience.

What are you most proud of in your role at Boeing?

I have been really lucky to lead some great teams globally, and specifically, I’ve been really lucky with Boeing to lead teams in London, Manchester, Delhi, Bangalore, Dubai, Riyadh, Nepal, Beijing, Tokyo, Mesa, Chicago and Seattle. Each of these experiences has influenced my personal development.

When I look at Boeing’s mission to Connect, Protect, Explore and Inspire Our World Through Aerospace Innovation, I embrace the global nature of that mission and the power of connectivity. We want to connect, protect, explore and inspire the world.

My experience and my career journey across the globe demonstrate the power of connectivity. I’m proud to be learning and developing alongside teammates in Mesa and nationwide. So, I’m most proud of the global nature of my role and the journey I have been on – and how I have personally and professionally developed throughout that process.

What are you excited about for the future of talent acquisition?

It’s a similar theme – the opportunities provided by global technology and the opportunity to operate as a team that is globally efficient, locally relevant and resolutely focused on the candidate and user experience.

The opportunities that come with a global talent approach are long established. We know that, for example, there are a million graduates in India. There are also 200,000 Chinese nationals who pursue further education in the U.S., but they have yet to truly be embraced because it is difficult for employers to hire them.

We need to make it easier for talent to move around the globe, and even if you just look on a local scale, we need to make it easier for talent to move around the country. Then we need to make it possible for workers who have been influenced and enriched by an experience in a new location to return home with a more global perspective and stronger than when they left. That’s huge.

I’m energized daily by our mission to become global talent champions and to embrace an intentional use of talent technology. As I look to the future, that is what I’m most excited about as we evolve our partnership with PeopleScout and other valued partners.

Competition for talent is increasing across the globe, and employers are looking for innovative strategies to stay ahead of the competition. To gain a competitive advantage, employers are deploying a variety of methods. Wages are on the rise after years of slow growth. New graduates face strong prospects for employment. Even retirement is starting to look different for older workers with important skills. Finding new ways to source and attract workers with the skills of the future is a growing need.

In the U.S., years of job growth have led to the lowest unemployment rate in decades. Around the world, favorable job conditions are making it more difficult for employers to hire the talent they need. Adding to the challenge, employers are facing a skills shortage as they look to hire candidates who have the training, education and experience to bring their workforce into the future. This pressure is even greater in industries that are currently adapting to disruptive technology, like the auto industry. While reskilling and future degree programs can help increase the size of the talent pipeline in the future, employers still need to find and hire talent today. Building a talent community is a promising solution.

What is a Talent Community?

A talent community is a sourcing strategy that is an ongoing, multifaceted approach to candidate engagement that creates employment brand ambassadors and a talent pool that begins to feed itself. It is a process rather than an event and takes continual effort to maintain.

Traditional sourcing starts with a job opening. From there, a job description is written and disseminated. A sourcing specialist may search their contacts and social media to find a candidate with skills that match, but the process largely involves posting a job and waiting for the right candidate to find you.

In a talent community, the process is cyclical. It starts before a job requisition is created, and it doesn’t stop when a candidate is hired. Employers consistently build profiles of the types of candidates they would like for roles they may need to fill in the future. Then, employers need to build pipelines through technology, partnerships and employer branding initiatives to connect with those people, whether the employer currently has a job opening for that candidate or not. Finally, when a candidate gets to the point of applying, the experience throughout that process needs to be so strong that even candidates who do not make it through the process will become ambassadors for that brand and continue to apply for open positions in the future.

Building a talent community sourcing strategy has a host of benefits for employers. A community is sustainable. It can feed itself. This means decreased time-to-fill and cost-of-vacancy because candidates who are interested in working for an organization are waiting for a job to be posted rather than a recruiter posting a job and waiting for the right candidate to apply. It also leads to increased quality of hire because the employer has already determined the ideal candidate persona and has built a pipeline to find those people. When more qualified candidates are in that pipeline, the likelihood of making a strong hire goes up.

Why Talent Communities Alone Aren’t Enough

• They have to be combined with great employer branding.
• Your content has to be engaging and of value to the audience.
• You have to have the right mix of viable candidates with the skills and experience that your company values, and ambassadors for your employer brand.
• It is what you put into it, not what you take out–you have to cultivate the community or it will stagnate.

Using Employer Branding to Build a Talent Community

As employers work to create a talent community they need to build an employer brand that stands out from other organizations they compete with for talent. Organizations with a strong employer brand can stand out in a crowded landscape and draw in more candidates. There are several strategies employers can use to build their brands.

Online Talent Communities

An online talent community is a way to continue to communicate with candidates who may be interested in working for you in the future but can’t find a job opening that meets their skills and needs right now. It is also a way to engage with candidates who apply to jobs they aren’t qualified for yet but still have potential. An online community allows candidates to provide their contact information, resume and job interests. Then, the organization can search those resumes when a position opens, and it can send matching job openings to the candidate. This keeps the employer at the front of a candidate’s mind and provides recruiters with a slate of candidates every time a requisition opens.

Recruitment Email Marketing

Many organizations use email marketing as a part of their traditional marketing strategy, but it is also important in employment branding. Email marketing can be used in partnership with an online talent community. Organizations can send recruitment marketing emails to share job openings, as well as information about their culture. One caveat to using email marketing as a part of an employer branding strategy is that the emails should be as personalized as possible. A candidate who has provided their resume should only receive job openings that correspond with their skillsets. Data about candidates can also be used to personalize how often candidate receive emails or at what time of the day they are sent. Regulations like CAN-SPAM in the U.S. and GDPR in the EU regulate email marketing, and we discuss those later in this post.

Social Media

Every organization should have a strategy for sharing its employment brand on social media, though that strategy may look different for different companies. One option is to create a separate “careers” social media page where the organization can post job openings and information about the workplace, culture and current employees. At PeopleScout, we recommend this strategy to our clients and work with them to optimize their existing pages to showcase their employer brand. This strategy works well for employers with a strong brand presence and large volume of hires. Another option, especially for smaller organizations, is to include some employer branding on their traditional social media accounts. In this approach, employer branding related posts that share information about the workplace and culture should be interspersed between standard social media posts.

Video

Many employers are familiar with video interviewing, but video can enhance employer branding in several additional ways and doesn’t always need high production quality. One example is video job descriptions. A job posting could include a short video of a hiring manager talking about the job and what they are looking for. A video like this gives a candidate a better understanding of the job and gives them a glimpse into the culture of the organization. Additionally, organizations can use video to show workplace tours, so job seekers get an idea of what working for an organization might look like. If an organization is hiring for a lot of entry-level roles but frequently promotes within the company, a video that shows an employee’s career path from entry-level to a leadership role can also motivate candidates to apply for hard-to-fill entry-level jobs.

Chatting and Text

Another method of building a strong employer brand is communicating with candidates in the ways candidates want to communicate. Chat and text are growing in popularity. Some employers are deploying chatbots throughout their recruitment process. For others, a chat window with limited hours but access to a live recruiter can be successful. While many employers may be cautious to start a system to text messages candidates, several PeopleScout clients have found success and higher rates of candidate engagement.

Using Innovative Technology to Power a Talent Community

While a compelling employer brand is important for attracting strong candidates, it’s not enough to stay ahead in the current competitive landscape. Innovative technology solutions can help employers source top talent faster than the competition.

Geofencing

Geofencing can be used in a few different ways during the sourcing process. Much like targeted ads for restaurants or stores can be delivered to a person’s cell phone or computer based on where that person is located, job ads can be targeted to candidates in a specific geographical area as well. This can be valuable to employers that have a variety of locations spread across a large geographical area. Geofencing can be used to target job ads at candidates near specific branches. It can also be used for industry events or expos where a large number of potential candidates could be in one location at the same time.

AI Sourcing

Artificial intelligence sourcing can provide recruiters with a solid slate of candidates as soon as a requisition is opened, giving the recruiter a strong head start to fill the role. An AI sourcing solution that uses predictive analytics modeling can also provide the recruiter with information about how well the candidate matches the job opening and how likely the candidate is to leave their current role. With this information, recruiters are able to work more quickly and efficiently, filling the role with the best talent in less time. In the end, it saves companies time and money. At PeopleScout, AI sourcing is built into Affinix^TM, PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology solution.

AI Data Tracking

AI data tracking can be used to make other sourcing and employer branding strategies more effective. Artificial intelligence and predictive analytics can understand and predict candidate behaviors. By tracking what time of day candidates apply, open emails or use social media, employers can schedule email marketing and social media posts to maximize the number of candidates who will see and click on job postings. Employers can also use this data to optimize their ad spend on job boards, so the ads appear when the best candidates are most likely to be online. One PeopleScout client had data that showed most of its applicants applied after lunch on Wednesdays. By posting jobs just before that timeframe, the employer saw a 15 percent increase in applications.

Finding a Partner

As employers work to build their own talent communities, an RPO provider can be a valuable partner. The right RPO partner will have a wealth of knowledge gleaned from experience solving a wide variety of problems and successfully sourcing and recruiting in a number of markets and industries. Employers can benefit from that collective knowledge.

Additionally, working with an RPO partner provides compliance benefits. Many of the sourcing strategies addressed in this article are impacted by GDPR, CAN-SPAM and other regulations, as well as regulations by the OFCCP. RPO providers have years of experience with these regulations and strong checks in place to ensure all sourcing strategies are compliant. This can provide peace of mind for employers.

Employers working with RPO partners will also see financial benefits, including reducing or eliminating agency spend. At PeopleScout, some clients have gone from agency usage as high as 25 percent or more to zero. To accomplish that, employers need to be committed from the top down to building the sourcing infrastructure to implement a talent community.

To find an RPO partner who is a good fit, employers should look for providers who possess customizable offerings that can be adapted to meet every need. A one-size-fits-all approach ignores the specific needs of employers in different industries and the unique challenges that can arise in recruiting in different markets. To build a strong talent community, employers should look for an RPO partner who can successfully deploy and manage these innovative sourcing strategies.