What does a futurist foresee for talent acquisition professionals in 2024? Learn the talent acquisition strategies you will need in the coming year to stay ahead.
According to LinkedIn’s 2023 Future of Recruiting research, the talent acquisition function is picking up speed this year: 70% of talent acquisition pros said the team can claim a seat at the proverbial table, while 47% believe their recruiting budgets will increase this year.
Talent acquisition teams are already deploying a variety of technologies to achieve their business goals, including candidate sourcing software, recruitment marketing tools, and data collection and analysis programs. In 2024, the recruiting function will continue to evolve in response to labor market forces, and it will do so with help from automation tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI).
If talent acquisition professionals want to get even better at identifying the right people for the right roles, they should be at the front of the line to experiment and innovate in four areas: generative AI, candidate experience, deeper talent pools, and viral employee advocacy.
Generative AI
At the recent ReimagineHR Conference, Gartner revealed three macro trends in recruiting technology that HR leaders need to address in 2024: generative AI hype will serve as a larger tipping point to determine how best to use AI in recruitment, amplified regulations will increase vigilance, and elongated buying cycles will heighten the need for HR to be more cautious about vendors.
Generative AI is a form of artificial intelligence that learns the patterns and structure of input training data and then creates new data that has similar characteristics. Although AI has been used in the recruitment function for some time to personalize candidate outreach, schedule interviews, and conduct pre-employment testing, the integration of generative AI specifically is in its infancy. In 2024, we will see talent acquisition teams start to deploy generative AI to write job descriptions, interview questions, and communicate with candidates and new hires.
Amidst the flurry of federal, state, and local legislation, recruiting organisations will be under pressure to practice responsible and ethical AI usage – developing company-tailored guidelines and processes that are compliant and transparent to stakeholders. These activities will be conducted in partnership with HR technology providers.
Candidate experience
Talent Board’s Candidate Experience Benchmark Research Report found that candidate resentment, which is a measure of negative experience with the hiring process, is at historic highs.
Talent acquisition teams can leverage technology to facilitate a more streamlined, mobile-first application process that will help create a better candidate experience. From automating communications to offering an apply-now QR code, recruiters have already come a long way in this domain. They can innovate further in 2024 by using text-based interview scheduling, targeted ads on popular social media platforms, and immersive, virtual-reality based assessments and interviews.
Organizations can consider using an AI-based tool to collect and analyse real-time candidate feedback and immediately answer candidate questions. They might also deploy blockchain technology to securely eliminate the red tape associated with background screening and credential checking.
Deeper talent pools
The year ahead is shaping up to be the year of skills-based hiring. And this means broadening talent pools by considering people without college degrees, people with disabilities, seniors, military veterans, and the formerly incarcerated. Recruiters can determine whether these individuals have the core skills (or can be easily trained) to take on open positions by using a new form of artificial intelligence called talent intelligence.
Talent intelligence harnesses deep learning to assess skills adjacency (if you are good at skill A, you will also be good at skill B) to open non-traditional pathways for candidates who don’t have the experience doing the exact job needed but have every ounce of capability required.
Talent intelligence provides the ability to assess skills easily and credibly, so organisations can avoid any implicit bias that can negatively impact hiring. It also gives HR leaders a pathway to redeploy people more flexibly in times of disruption and to redesign jobs in keeping with digital transformation.
Viral employee advocacy
Post-pandemic, employee voice wields unprecedented power. Going into 2024, workers in all functions at all levels feel should empowered to use online mediums to speak up about their workplaces.
And talent acquisition teams are finally becoming wise to the idea that the Net Promoter Score – a measure traditionally used in marketing to discern how likely a consumer is to recommend a product to someone else – can be deployed in employer branding as well.
By encouraging your alumni networks and existing employees to speak positively about the organisation online, you’ll build a reserve of goodwill that may make a difference when a candidate is deciding between two competitive offers. If employees need a bit of extra prompting, you might offer a generous referral bonus if they post a job description on a social media profile, for example, and the outreach results in a new hire.
Organisations have spent the last decade being concerned that brand news might go viral, but this doesn’t have to be a negative proposition. Depending on their individual platforms, some employees can exponentially increase the reach of your recruitment messaging.
The ongoing shortage of skilled talent means that organisations can no longer afford to take a passive approach to recruiting. Technology now makes it possible to directly touch every individual who is considering a job with your company, and 2024 should be the year that you take advantage of that.
This post was written by Ceridian on their website here. They are an exhibitor on the HRTech247 HCM Full Platform floor and Payroll, Time & Attendance floor. You can visit their HRTech247 exhibition stand here.
