Recruitment Archives - Page 2 of 2 - The Future of Work Exchange

Avoid Passing on Passive Job Candidates

Business Leadership General Insights HR Talent Acquisition by John Yuva on 03/13/2023

When we talk about Future of Work job candidates, it’s often in the context of active recruiting through direct sourcing initiatives, talent marketplaces, or online recruiting platforms. With the transition to skills-based hiring, attracting and selecting the right candidate is even more critical in meeting enterprise goals. As such, it may be time to expand the talent pipeline and include passive job seekers. This candidate segment can lie under the recruitment radar among the hundreds of active job applicants vying for coveted organizational roles.

Passive but Silently Active

Who are passive job candidates? These mostly employed individuals are not currently looking for employment opportunities. Many are happy in their place of work, but should the right career opportunity present itself, they could be persuaded to leave. According to Zippia, an online job recruiting firm, 73% of potential candidates are passive job seekers. And a considerable 87% of these candidates are open to the new job opportunities provided by active recruitment.

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Candidate-Centricity Should Be the Nexus of 2023 Hiring

HR Talent Talent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on 01/30/2023

Sometimes it can be incredibly taxing on our minds to configure the many, many ways the Future of Work influences the way we live, the way we work, and the ways those two intersect. From new technology and innovative platforms to conscious leadership and overall business transformation, the very notion of the “future of how we work” involves so many intricacies that it can make our collective heads spin.

However, in a vacuum, we have to look at the future (and, in this case, the very near future) and configure specific aspects of corporate operations in such a way that they align with the external forces now driving success…or failure.

Talent has become the top competitive differentiator in a market that is increasingly globalized, unpredictable, and disruptive. Businesses that source the best talent, utilize that talent to get work done effectively, and retain that talent are always going to be the ones that thrive in a business arena that is evolving at a breakneck clip.

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Candidate-Centricity Should Be the Nexus of 2023 Hiring

HR Talent Talent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on 11/17/2022

We’ve witnessed (and, more importantly, experienced) the highs and lows of talent engagement, hiring, and talent acquisition over the past two-plus years: pandemic-led layoffs, the rise of workforce agility, The Great Resignation, The Great Resettling, quiet quitting, quiet firing, and worker empowerment. It’s surely been a roller-coaster for talent acquisition execs, hiring managers, HR leaders, and other executives that hold some responsibility for workforce management within the typical organization.

At the end of the day, however, all of these talent-led transformations lead to one conclusion that should form the foundation of talent acquisition strategies in 2023: a candidate-centric model is the best path forward, considering the risks of an economic recession, continued global disruptions from war and supply chain issues, and, critically, the ramifications of the “talent revolution” that businesses have experienced since March 2020.

There are many reasons why running a candidate-centric hiring model makes sense in the year ahead:

Workers are done with being overpowered by their managers and employers when it comes to poor working conditions and a lack of appreciation.
Talented professionals have undergone a mental transformation during pandemic times that have forced them to reevaluate the impact of “work” and “career paths” on their personal lives as humans, leading to a desire for more purposeful work.
Workers desire true flexibility, not just a free weekly lunch or a ping-pong table in the break room. The flexibility for personal care, child care, elder care, etc. is all-important in today’s workforce; professionals crave the ability to attend their children’s’ events or harness the real power of remote and hybrid work to ensure that they have a proper work-life integration.
Candidates have more choices than ever before, regardless of the state of today’s economy. Businesses must stand out from the pack and offer a truly emotionally-engaging experience for their potential workers that leaves a real impression; will candidates gain a sense of trust, as well as an understanding of workplace and corporate culture?
Building on the above attribute, candidates desire a seamless and frictionless experience when applying for a job, negotiating terms, and following through the onboarding process. These may seem like more tactical aspects than strategic, but they go a long way towards developing a positive candidate experience for potential workers.

There’s more to developing a talent-oriented hiring strategy than just being committed to the candidate; enterprises must look to the aspects above and understand that, in a volatile labor market, they need to do so much more than they have ever done before to attract the best-fit, top-tier talent, skillsets, and expertise. The candidate experience is paramount and candidate-centricity hiring models are essential to thriving in 2023.

Key Providers for 2022: LiveHire

Direct Sourcing Solution Providers Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 10/11/2022

The Background:

Over the next two years, nearly 70% of business leaders expect to implement an “integrated” talent acquisition strategy within their organizations, according to Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research. This mode of approach towards worker engagement, in essence, translates into the ability to blend traditional measures of talent acquisition with new and innovative means to foster better relationships with candidates and drive recruitment success.

An integrated talent acquisition strategy doesn’t just render the intermingling of “old” and “new” together, but rather involves a fresh approach towards talent engagement and candidate sourcing that 1) drives better time-to-fill rates, 2) improves the overall success of projects led by both FTE and non-employee candidates, and 3) infuses the greater organization with top-tier skillsets and expertise that can be deployed and retained for both current and future initiatives.

Enter LiveHire.

Why They Were Selected:

LiveHire was the first true direct sourcing technology platform to disrupt the market well over a decade ago, buoyed by its unique mixture of ATS, CRM, and talent community management functionality. They have long been a market leader in this industry, and rightfully so: a truly global software entity, LiveHire has redefined what it means to technologically-enable “total talent management” through an innovative array of powerful recruitment solutions.

In Their Own Words:

LiveHire is the most proven technology for direct sourcing and total talent acquisition with more than 200 clients across 20 industries globally. Independently awarded for exceptional candidate experience, product design, innovation, and client outcomes, we enable our clients to universally attract and engage all worker categories, including direct-hire, contingent and independent workers, for a true total talent solution. We are proud that LiveHire is not only the most proven but also the most loved technology by candidates and recruiters alike, with almost a decade of top NPS scores and industry ratings.

Our mission is to empower the flow of the world’s talent, so we consider candidate experience our superpower and know that it leads to unmatched outcomes in speed and diversity of hire. In direct sourcing, we are known as the battle-tested, heavyweight technology to achieve hiring scale through our powerful candidate relationship management (CRM) and applicant tracking system (ATS), unique talent pooling, intelligent matching, 2-way text messaging and candidate journeys through “moments that matter.”

Our leaders combine deep experience in technology and staffing, as well as some of the world’s most admired thought leadership firms for talent strategy, workforce solutions, and the Future of Work. Continuing to innovate and evolve our product is a top priority for LiveHire, and we frequently seek market feedback to identify improvement opportunities that will deliver measurable results for our clients.

We would love to hear from you. For more information, visit us at www.livehire.com/us or contact karen.gonzalez@livehire.com. Follow us on LinkedIn.

The Outlook:

The Future of Work Exchange has maintained, since its inception nearly 16 months ago, that the realm of direct sourcing is positioned to transform the ways businesses think about talent, work, and workforce management. However, no longer does simple automation for talent curation and talent pool development portend an effective direct sourcing technology platform in today’s frenetic, volatile, and dynamic business arena.

LiveHire is well-positioned to not only continue as a dominant force in the direct sourcing market, but also become a revolutionary solution due to its laser-like focus on the candidate experience, innovation within the integration of ATS, CRM, and direct sourcing functionality, universal talent engagement and talent nurture capabilities, disruptive recruitment automation, and frictionless total talent management offerings.

The Ultimate Value of Direct Sourcing

Direct Sourcing by Christopher J. Dwyer on 05/18/2022

Successful direct sourcing programs have made a large impact on the quality of the overall workforce by achieving better alignment between an organization’s needs and the best available talent than alternate recruiting methods. However, the competitive advantage in talent recruitment that the early adopters of direct sourcing have gained will begin to yield as more new programs are launched each year.

The 55% of businesses that are currently running some form of direct sourcing programs today are utilizing talent pools and talent communities as a viable means of building talent pipelines, reducing talent acquisition costs, ensuring strong skillsets and expertise, and structuring a truly dynamic workforce. Direct sourcing enables a business to act as its own recruitment firm and leverage the power of its brand to attract desired workers to its centralized talent pool. The process also helps enterprises engage candidates directly, increasing the chance of building stronger, longer-lasting relationships with top-tier talent.

While the pandemic has turned job interviews into a more and, sometimes fully-, virtual process, the human elements of conversation, bonding, and interpersonal connection are not completely lost. Direct sourcing bypasses intermediaries and allows the candidates to develop direct connections (hence, “direct” sourcing) with hiring decision-makers. Candidates that are not hired initially can, nonetheless, become candidates for other positions in the future. By eliminating the agency or middleman, enterprises are better able to tap into a developed bench of previously engaged talent and cut lengthy time-to-fill rates. The same holds true for other candidates that have been vetted in some form and are “known” by the hiring team (i.e., “silver medalists,” retirees, past contingent workers or freelancers, etc.), or were targeted for curation based on their current job experience.

Beyond the candidate relationships, direct sourcing allows a business to leverage (and manage) its culture and brand to attract recruits that are easily engaged for future projects and initiatives. Hearing long-employed (and loyal) HR and business professionals discuss the traits and culture of their organization is a more significant and credible way to learn about a potential employer than through the words of a recruiter with a commission on the line. The informal testimonials of the internal hiring teams can effectively build engagement and ultimately, worker loyalty.

While the talent curation part of direct sourcing typically takes time to develop, most organizations possess an innate ability to identify strong cultural fits and highly-desirable skillsets. Additionally, the ability of internal recruiters, HR, and hiring managers to collaborate and tailor job searches to a unique team, manager, project, or location is unmatched when dealing with outside recruiters. The level of nuance can be akin to the difference between a surgeon and a butcher. The ability to increase recruiting precision can be particularly valuable when businesses are managing specific diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

One other notable attribute of direct sourcing is that it avoids the heavy price of fully-loaded talent acquisition costs charged by outside firms. While successful direct sourcing programs reduce talent acquisition friction and costs in the short-term, as businesses continue to devote resources to it, they will find these programs can also transform how work is done. And, in a world that has become more digitized (especially in the HR and talent arenas), direct sourcing is fast becoming table stakes for businesses that are actively pursuing workforce agility.

Talent Quality-Led Recruiting and the Future of Work

Talent by Christopher J. Dwyer on 05/04/2022

“Talent quality” can be a nebulous concept. Staffing organizations often have to balance the many innerworkings of such an idea, delicately balancing the intricacies of what they believe “talent quality” to be. In a business world that has been dramatically transformed by a pandemic, changes in how businesses operate, and, of course, the impact of Future of Work accelerants, today’s enterprises, staffing agencies, and other key groups must be focused on broadening the definitions around talent quality and put those at the heart of any extended workforce management program.

The Future of Work Exchange is excited to partner with Glider.ai for an exclusive Q&A event tomorrow (May 5) at 11am ET. Ben Walker, a longtime thought leader and expert in the workforce solutions industry, will join me to discuss:

The impact of talent quality-led recruiting and how these strategies should be developed and executed.
How artificial intelligence can be a gamechanger in regards to eradicating talent fraud and improving overall candidate quality.
The priorities of today’s extended workforce programs, and;
The key KPIs and performance metrics that are required to gauge the impact of talent quality programs.

Click here or on the image below to register for tomorrow’s event. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Direct Sourcing 2.0 Is Here to Combat “The Great Resignation”

Direct Sourcing by Christopher J. Dwyer on 02/22/2022

Today, the stakes for finding, attracting, and hiring the right talent are higher still, and a literal talent “frenzy” has hiring managers in all industries and geographies struggling to fill key positions. And that was before “The Great Resignation” of 2021-2022 took hold. Now, more than ever, these leaders need to take control of their talent destinies. As a result, direct sourcing has become one of the hottest topics in the world of talent and work.

With an ever-increasing number of talent channels, including digital staffing marketplaces, traditional staffing vendors, professional services, talent networks, and social media platforms, the ability to match project requirements with available skillsets has never been easier. It has also never been more competitive or difficult to hire top candidates. Businesses that harness the power of direct sourcing and talent pools have the ability to develop an agile, extended workforce which can be the key to truly thriving in these evolving times.

In 2021, Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research found that 82% of all businesses felt the challenging times of the past two years increased the demand for extended and non-employee talent. This number reinforces the idea that workforce flexibility (and scalability) are essential links to economic progress in the now-chaotic, hyper-competitive global marketplace. And, in many ways, operationalizing that flexibility/scalability has become a driving force in enabling overall workforce agility. To do so, enterprises can tap into talent pools, marketplaces, clouds, and communities to enhance the work done by the trusted full-time staff; they can also leverage a range of services and other recruiting streams to build a dynamic talent acquisition process that can support crucial enterprise initiatives.

This is why direct sourcing has become such a powerful tool for business leaders today.

Truth be told, even basic direct sourcing programs can drive value through a combination of on-demand, plug-and-play talent, and hard-cost savings. But the pandemic’s impact on the workforce has dramatically accelerated market shifts. Today, talent is scarce and comes at a premium. As a result, workers are demanding greater flexibility from their employers. They are more focused on work-life balance, while also desiring greater independence. Among many things, the “Talent Revolution” indicates a seismic shift in power towards the worker and away from the employer…meaning that businesses require a more powerful, more flexible, and more scalable version of direct sourcing. Enter “Direct Sourcing 2.0.”

Now is the time for “Direct Sourcing 2.0,” the next generation of sourcing strategies that blend innovative solutions with a renewed focus on the candidate experience and an ability to use talent pools to populate the key projects and roles that require expertise and experience. Today’s business climate has accelerated the need for a reimagined approach to candidate engagement. As the market for talent continues to tighten amidst the lingering pandemic and a surging number of resignations, businesses find themselves in a new kind of “war for talent,” one that is far more extensive and complicated than anything experienced pre-pandemic.

How Hidden Biases Can Affect Hiring Initiatives

General Insights Solution Providers by Featured Contributor on 02/14/2022

[Today’s guest contribution was written by the team at Prosperix.]

Businesses often pride themselves on their diversity initiatives in the workplace, but the hidden danger of recruiting bias means limiting your candidate options during the hiring process. Maybe you don’t even know you’re doing it, but everyone has internal biases, whether consciously or unconsciously. Besides the most common bias that is already being tackled, like gender bias in hiring, the workplace is rife with unconscious bias, and since you aren’t aware of it, it’s hard to stamp out. It’s detrimental to both current and prospective employees, recruiters, and the companies themselves. Unconscious bias can inhibit diversity, recruitment efforts, promotions, and the retention rate in companies. For being an unknown factor, bias has a lot of harmful side effects.

Are You Guilty of These Common Biases?

The good news is that once you know about your own hidden biases, you can take steps to correct them with knowledge and training. This means that you won’t always be affected by them, or, if you are, at least to a lesser extent. What exactly are these biases that might be affecting your hiring decisions? Listed below are some of the more prevalent ones:

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What is the Future of Direct Sourcing?

Direct Sourcing Talent Talent Acquisition by Christopher J. Dwyer on 10/14/2021

Businesses learned a harsh lesson in 2020: those that could not adapt to the major shifts in work optimization were the ones that could not survive months of extreme disruption. As 2021 careens towards its end, another new year is on the horizon, and businesses must prepare for perhaps the most critical period of their history given the direction of the economy and the labor market.

The shift towards “flexibility as the Future of Work” means that enterprises must execute in a more dynamic manner. The companies that thrived and continue to thrive are the organizations that understand and embrace 1) how they want to get work done, 2) the talent and technology needed to get that work done across both the short- and long-term, and 3) the proper balance between human and automation.

In looking at various perspectives in how work was transformed over the past 18 months, there is one strategic program that businesses seem to gravitate towards in convergence with the talent-led world in which we now live: direct sourcing.

Going into 2020, direct sourcing and talent pools were the #1 and #2 (respectively) priorities for businesses; even the most forward-looking organization could not imagine at that time just how critical a program it would be in the face of unprecedented change. Even the most basic direct sourcing programs drive table-stakes value to their owners through a combination of on-demand, plug-and-play talent and a level of hard cost savings. However, many attributes of the world of work and talent were fast-tracked over the past 18 months due to the most serious public health crisis of our lifetimes and its long-ranging ramifications across the scope of business, worker, and personal perspectives.

Direct sourcing went from being an additional way to find talent to a revolutionary means of tapping into the extended workforce to drive better business outcomes. As the business world continues to evolve, even in the throes of a “Great Resignation,” the lowest unemployment since the pandemic began, and “power” shifting to the worker, the continued transformation of talent engagement is now a standard. The question then becomes: How do businesses continue to respond in the wake of being forced to reimagine talent acquisition, human capital, and the agile workforce?

Direct Sourcing 2.0.

“Direct Sourcing 2.0” follows the next generation of direct sourcing strategies and is fundamentally rooted in the linkage between key technological arenas, a renewed focus on the candidate experience, a seamless connection between talent pools and the projects and roles that require specific expertise, and a retooled “hiring manager experience” that takes into account Future of Work-era innovation.

Why the shift to Direct Sourcing 2.0? Isn’t direct sourcing effective in its “1.0” version? Of course. Direct sourcing and its traditional phases (including talent curation, talent pool segmentation, integration into core recruitment streams, talent nurture, etc.) are driving increased value within those organizations that are currently leveraging standard programs. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t evolve. Take into account the major shifts in both business and candidate behavior over the 18 months, and, especially, over the past several months:

The “candidate experience” is far deeper than we ever imagined. It’s not just about ensuring that candidates have a positive experience when engaged, but rather extending that experience into areas such as when they are engaged, how they are engaged, the communication methods used for reach out, methods of onboarding and offboarding (seamless, digital, and virtual!), etc. Recruitment marketing automation, digitized referral campaigns, and a mobile-optimized means of communicating with hiring managers all contribute to the next great era of the candidate experience.
Hiring managers should be engaging and sourcing talent in a consumerized and enhanced manner for the sake of efficiency and quality. This doesn’t mean that we have to completely meld e-commerce technology with direct sourcing platforms, however, it does translate into taking into account just how effective existing processes are within the hiring managers’ total workload. The greater business must provide hiring managers with the necessary trust and education to ensure that these leaders are converging the company’s main goals and objectives with how they find, engage, and source talent (which will result in superior role-to-candidate matches). In addition, harnessing the power of next-gen direct sourcing automation, recruitment marketing technology, and similar solutions will boost the hiring manager experience.
Businesses must go “beyond the brand” and prove that they are fostering truly inclusive workplace cultures that resonate with candidates. An organization’s “brand” can be a powerful tool for direct sourcing; candidates tend to flock to those companies that align with their own beliefs and values. However, businesses must move beyond the brand and incorporate deeper elements of the organization in how it applies Direct Sourcing 2.0 strategies, including communicating its purpose and vision (and ensuring that it resonates with candidates) and how well its preferences in how work is done are broadcast to workers (fully-remote, hybrid, on-site, etc.). A purpose-driven organization wants to establish a more trustful relationship with its candidates, share its core cultural values with them, and communicate how open it is to the attributes desired in today’s “Age of the Worker,” such as flexibility, career development opportunities, and the enablement of core skills growth.

Look for the Future of Work Exchange‘s upcoming Direct Sourcing 2.0 research study later this month.

Unlimited to the Core: PRO Unlimited Bolsters Direct Sourcing Technology With WillHire Acquisition

Direct Sourcing Solution Providers Technology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on 10/01/2021

Just a few years ago, many business leaders were aware of the benefits of direct sourcing but had not yet fully embraced its value. In 2019, direct sourcing as an extension of non-employee workforce management caught steam when enterprises realized that they could drive both hard and soft benefits through direct relationships with known and vetted candidates; by bringing these workers into curated pools and internal talent communities, enterprises had a cost-effective and on-demand way of injecting new, top-tier talent into their projects and initiatives.

Going into 2020, direct sourcing and talent pools were, respectively, the top two priorities for businesses entering a new decade. Although the early months of the pandemic may have put a damper on many talent acquisition and contingent workforce program initiatives, the truth is that direct sourcing (and its many unique attributes) emerged as an ideal means of both keeping top-tier candidates engaged and positioning the greater organization with workforce agility. And today, direct sourcing has become one of the preeminent means of driving higher talent quality and supporting true workforce scalability. Nearly 55% of businesses across the globe, according to Future of Work Exchange research, have a proper direct sourcing initiative in place today (compared to only half this figure just two years ago).

MSP and VMS provider PRO Unlimited has long demonstrated its direct sourcing efficacy, with its DirectSource PRO offering one of the market’s strongest solutions for direct sourcing. While the provider’s end-to-end power is industry-leading, achieving the “platform” vision that CEO Kevin Akeroyd laid out last year would not be possible without both organic growth and aggressive market activity to bolster the solution’s already-impressive range of innovative functionality.

“Direct sourcing is no longer a “hype cycle” topic, it is a mission-critical priority for enterprises and one that is finally being invested heavily in and adopted. The historical problem has been the utter fragmentation and immaturity of solutions,” said Kevin Akeroyd, CEO of PRO Unlimited. “Large global brands have needed MSP services, curation Services, direct sourcing SaaS, VMS SaaS, analytics SaaS, market rate data, and payroll just to get off the ground. So, they’ve gone out and hired seven small vendors that each do their own little piece, and that large brand spends the next several years doing nothing but managing people/process/systems integration and vendor management instead of driving business outcomes, winning the war for talent, and driving hundreds of millions of savings out of their organizations every year. DirectSource PRO has solved that; it’s the one holistic platform that does everything, at scale, globally, and provides that single platform and system of record for direct sourcing…Hence the adoption of over 40 Fortune 1000 clients adopting it just in the last five months (with that number expected to be over 80 by the end of the year).”

Yesterday, PRO Unlimited announced that it had acquired WillHire, one of the industry’s leading direct sourcing technology offerings. The acquisition allows PRO to reinforce the strength of its DirectSource PRO solution and tap into additional functionality; this acquisition also enables PRO to leverage WillHire’s comprehensive end-to-end campaign management technology for recruitment marketing, as well as its “marketing automation-like” self-scheduling and communication with talent. Other highlights of this acquisition include:

PRO Unlimited, WillHire, and Eightfold are a winning trifecta for direct sourcing. PRO’s direct sourcing technology was already a leading solution due its innovative stack and partnership with Eightfold. The addition of WillHire not only bolsters the total power of the DirectSource PRO offering from a pure functionality perspective.
WillHire brings an added layer of repeatable “Direct Sourcing 2.0” technology to PRO’s existing functionality. One of WillHire’s core strengths (as written about in Ardent’s 2021 Digital Staffing Platforms Technology Advisor) is its ability to enable “Direct Sourcing 2.0” capabilities, such as recruitment marketing, automated referral management, and deeper candidate matching algorithms. This acquisition will surely increase the overall power and impact of Direct Source PRO.
WillHire’s relationships and integrations with major job boards and career sites will deepen the overall talent reach of DirectSource PRO. The very crux of direct sourcing is building a repository of known, vetted, and top-shelf talent; WillHire’s existing integrations with leading industry job boards translates into a more robust swath of high-quality candidates. This will fortify DirectSource PRO’s talent engagement reach.

“Adding WillHire enables us to add large-scale digital talent board/network/FMS integrations, deeper AI/MBL matching, candidate/worker recruitment marketing and ongoing engagement, and skills assessment to the platform,” Akeroyd added. “And, as importantly, it is robust across ALL job types – including shift workers, light industrial, not just white collar, so it allows us to enable direct sourcing for an enterprise’s ENTIRE contingent worker population.”