Companies and consultants have long talked about digital transformation in HR, but the pandemic has forced companies to hit the accelerator on their HR transformation plans.
We recently attended Guy Kawasaki's inspirational session and thought we would share his three key principles since they make an excellent guide for HR and talent acquisition teams to adapt to the future of hiring in these challenging times.
#1: Don’t depend on miracles
Success doesn’t come by just sitting in a corner and waiting for an opportunity to pop up. Organizations need to research and forecast solutions within their respective industries that can keep them going, or even better, push them forward. This will lead businesses to make the right decisions and yield positive results.
What this means for HR and Talent Acquisition teams: COVID-19 brought to light how some organizations are ill-equipped to deal with the sudden shift in work operations. 62% of TAs have said that the outbreak has negatively impacted their company’s ability to hire according to plan. They remain in limbo, uncertain how things are going to pan out. Many industries are experiencing hiring freezes while others have seen an uptick - it’s truly a chaotic time for hiring.
To survive and grow, HR leaders suggest that TA teams will need to take this opportunity to rebuild and improve not just their contingency plans, but their overall hiring strategy and tech. It’s a new era of work.
What TA teams can do: Putting the right technology infrastructure in place will help TA teams manage communications, collaboration, and productivity to keep their talent goal on track.
#2: Get ahead of the curve
As industries push further with innovation and technology, businesses need to focus on speed and foresight to strategically place themselves ahead.
What this means for HR and Talent Acquisition teams: Empowering teams with the right resources that can help them focus on strategy and getting the right talent. Industry experts believe this involves a future of recruiting using intelligent AI systems.
Intelligent AI systems will help TA teams automate repetitive, administrative tasks so that they can capitalize on their human aptitude to conduct proactive strategic hiring, building candidate relationships and collaborating with hiring managers.
TA teams are already pressed for time when it comes to important tasks like acquiring and screening candidates. They don’t need to be spending 30% of their time back-and-forth between candidates and interviewers to coordinate times to meet. In fact, 63% of recruiters would like interview scheduling to be intelligently automated as it is a huge time sink for them.
What TA teams can do: Embrace the benefits intelligent AI systems can bring to the hiring process and start looking into bringing these solutions into the talent acquisition process.
This certainly was the case for Siemens, whereby through having Evie work alongside them essentially as their AI recruitment coordinator, they have been spending 10X less time on scheduling than they usually would. They now have more time for the important work like sourcing and screening the right candidates.
#3: Run the right race
Guy reflects on how "it's a marathon, not a sprint"— a brilliant reminder that we need to keep building up towards the long-term goals. Even in such turbulent times, it is in your team's best interest to seize opportunities that make sense to your goal.
What this means for HR and Talent Acquisition teams: The pandemic has shown HR and Talent Acquisition teams that focusing on meeting the technological demands to support virtual recruitment processes is a key strategy to thrive in the future of hiring.
Even beyond the recovery of the current situation, the prospect of leveraging a global pool of candidates is becoming increasingly attractive. 64% of TAs expect remote jobs to be more common post-COVID-19. While adopting tech for hiring, teams have to think about the longevity of the tech solution, which will need to incorporate the likelihood of a strong remote hiring future.
What TA teams can do: Look for next generation intelligent systems that can scale up automation while also navigating an increasingly digital world. For example, Evie has the ability to cater to remote interview scheduling workflows at scale by integrating with tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. This is while keeping the interaction between interviewers and candidates as natural as possible to preserve a great candidate experience.
As the future points to remote hiring and contactless recruitment, there has never been a greater need to adapt faster and build the right tech infrastructure for successful talent acquisition. It is almost necessary that businesses start (if they haven’t already) bringing in intelligent AI systems for TA teams to start learning how to work in these new ways. The digital transformation journey for talent acquisition will be an ever-changing one, but one we are excited to see unfold.
