Fee-fi-fo-fum. I smell the blood of new talent acquisition tech. Talent acquisition tech can appear like a giant problem to people in TA fields. They can be challenging to learn, expensive, and could potentially replace your job. These concerns are valid, and some tech may be more troublesome than their worth.
Nevertheless, it’s also important to remember that talent acquisition tech is here to make your job easier. With the right tech, you have more time to focus on bigger-picture items. You can start to build further authentic connections with candidates rather than sweating the small stuff.
Here are some ways talent acquisition tech is shaping the recruitment process and how to best use it in your search for candidates.
Talent acquisition, Then vs. Now
Then
Before the onset of new talent acquisition tech, recruitment was highly based on people you know. This included the manual process of meeting candidates face-to-face, and working with recruiters. In an age before talent acquisition techs like ATS, job boards, and hiring tools like Matchfield, recruiters were the computers.
Back then, talent acquisition was hands-on and allowed for more authentic connections to be made. However, it was also slow, expensive, and had a greater margin of error. It was difficult for people in hiring positions to focus on their jobs when they had to manually go through each candidate’s resume. Test the candidate’s skills themselves. Or work with a challenging recruiter. Eventually, technology advanced, and so did the industry of hiring.
Now
We’ve come a long way from hiring signs, newspaper ads, and walk-ins. And we have further to go. Online recruitment does not stop at social media, online job boards, and networking sites. Talent acquisition tech is smoothing the process by adding intelligent recruitment practices. This tech includes AI technology, cloud data, and automation. These are important because even with a stellar social media strategy to get talent, job boards can be inefficient and could lead to many talented candidates falling through the cracks.
Whether or not professionals want to admit it, talent acquisition tech like AI, automation, and cloud technology is set to become the dominant technology reshaping the hiring landscape. Here’s a deeper dive into tech to look out for:
Artificial Intelligence
AI *shudder*, the word that makes professionals in talent acquisition either elicit groans or chirps. No matter how you feel about it, artificial intelligence is going to be a technology added to most acquisitions going forward.
An AI program can analyze big data, an inordinate amount of it. In ways that most professionals cannot. What makes them different from a typical Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is they can continue to learn and adapt from the machine. Allowing for any program you use to become more specific to what your talent acquisition needs are.
The keyword for AI is automation. The little tasks you had to do in talent acquisition like analyzing resumes, being aware of your bias, and even picking up subtle cues in online interviews, will now be smoothed over with AI.
Robotic Automation
Robotic Process Automation is a “digital employee” that is trained to perform tasks seen as menial and extremely detail-oriented. Technology like robotic automation is particularly useful for data entry and data transfer. This allows for HR and talent acquisition teams to focus on sourcing new candidates.
HR and talent acquisition teams need to look at the right automation software to accelerate their candidate sourcing so they can acquire them before their competition.
Mobile Apps
A large majority of users now apply through mobile apps rather than desktop job boards. Over half of America’s adult population uses smartphones, ranging from 73% in the 50-64 group to 94% for those under 29. You need to implement your job orders on mobile apps especially if you’re looking to hire Gen Z candidates who are now entering the workforce.
Many talent acquisition teams only focus on their website for job applications. While this could work internally, you are missing out on external candidates who are not aware of your open role. Advertising on big social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn should be a no-brainer. But also consider specialized hiring platforms such as Matchfield, which use app technology to deliver an easy-to-use experience for both client and candidate.
Cloud
Does your TA team have a proper cloud system in place to store big data? It’s often a sore spot for many HR and TA departments. Data received from recruiting campaigns is always at risk of being compromised, hacked, or deleted.
Cloud storage has revolutionized data storage for TA and HR teams. Even though they can be seen as expensive, Cloud services are now dropping their prices to be accommodating. It also allows TA teams to find any candidates they have stored in the past to access them with ease and efficiency.
Will technology replace my job?
Recruiters often scoff at the artificial element of talent acquisition tech. They feel like a human touch always needs to be in recruitment. So the same formula is repeated and talent acquisition is not innovated. However, this resistance usually stems from a fear of a person’s job being replaced with technology.
97% of HR teams surveyed by Allegis Group said that it is important to apply technology to their talent acquisition. However, 90% said they found it difficult to adopt the technology within their team. This resistance is understandable. No one wants a robot to replace their job. But HR and talent acquisition requires complex social interactions. It’s unlikely that technology is going to replace these positions.
Instead, focus on how technology can help you thrive in acquiring talent. Technology is meant to facilitate. Your interpersonal skills and instinct are hard to replicate with a robot. ⅓ of tasks will be able to be automated by an HR or TA professional. However, the rest of their jobs are secure.
Just imagine the amount of time and effort you will save with talent acquisition tech. Investing in the technology within your time is granting a huge productivity boost. As well as allowing for deeper and more extensive talent searches. This helps go beyond human error and biases.
Matchfield’s Talent Acquisition Tech
Matchfield is at the cutting edge of technology. The tech we use is to help make you a hiring superstar. We do not replace the HR or TA professional, but instead, give them the tools they need to match with a curated dashboard of candidates.
This dashboard is created by implementing the tech we’ve mentioned above. Automated and AI technology we use allows for precise preference matching not seen in general job boards. We have an extensive cloud of millions of candidates that can be selected in the blink of an eye. We want to continue to stay on this cutting edge to ensure we are giving the most innovative hiring product to our clients.
Ready to see what that cutting-edge looks like? Demo Matchfield yourself to see what talent acquisition tech we can offer you and your team.