Gaining Competitive Advantage in the Practice of Recruiting

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW

Both internal corporate and external independent recruiters are facing a changing landscape. Whether it’s a company facing corporate competitors, or an outside recruiting agency facing its own competition, both sides of the practice are seeing noteworthy challenges.

For example, new technology has opened the door to potentially thousands of job seekers offering up resumes for a given position opening. Yet the number of skilled and experienced candidates continues to decrease as demographic shifts roll on and traditional candidate pools run dry. The challenge—sourcing and attracting the best.

In addition, “good candidates” are becoming less patient when asked to provide detailed information on Internet portals, or to“hang in there” while the recruiting process runs its course. Yet the information candidates offer up regarding credentials, experience, and ccomplishments continues to become less trustworthy—even senior executives continue to be found having “faked” their educational credentials. The challenge—evaluating and identifying the best.

Legal compliance pressures continue to evolve, particularly with respect to receiving and processing resumes off the Internet. Yet guidance regarding the steps that constitute a fully compliant recruiting process is difficult to find…and sometimes even harder to implement. The challenge—avoiding legal risk and costly litigation.

Finally, companies focus increasingly on retention as a means to reduce the cost and risk associated with talent acquisition. Yet the science of workforce retention is only now emerging, and recruiters are only now beginning to consider retention as being equally important as “finding the right person.” The challenge—identifying“what really works” in retaining the best new hires.

Combined, these challenges are forcing recruiters to find new approaches to the practice of recruiting, whether provided by internal recruiters or external recruiting resources. The most noteworthy of the changes is the move toward consolidating recruiting and related HR tools and processes, previously provided by different types of vendors. The goal—recruitment offerings that take a “total solution” perspective to talent acquisition and retention.