Talent acquisition 2.0: Recruitment-Tech in 2021
Philosophy of technology in recruitment: Is it possible to “acquire” a talented person?
In macroeconomics, we learn that when there is a wider demand than supply, we see inequality in the market. If we dive into the world of employment in the Israeli economy, it can be clearly seen that the startup nation suffers from symptoms according to which there is a shortage of employees. According to the 2019 Israeli Innovation Authority HR report, there is a shortage of about 18,000 working hands in the economy.
In the Israeli hi-tech arena, we are witnessing a workers’ economy — this means that employees have more power than employers. Bill Gates once said: “Content is King”, and I say “Developer is King”.
The increase in demand has created a new field in the world of recruitment — “Talent Acquisition”. There is a need for expertise. But are those recruiters really the experts at it? Does the fact that you are recruiting and having a sexy headline on LinkedIn make you truly an expert in the field? Long story short — No.
We’ve known this since high school in the early moments of a relationship — what you pursue — runs away from you. It’s the same with recruiters and talents.
Intelligent recruitment?
In a world where everything is transparent and knowledge is everywhere, when a company needs a talent, it has to either create them or hunt them. But oh boy, it’s a long journey.
The privileged companies like to focus on the first option, as some companies have started to do in solving talent shortages. Amazon has announced that by 2025 it will establish a school for the training of technical professions.
Playtika started in an internal academy to produce a better fit, and great appreciation to Amdocs, which invests in bootcamps once a year and making an effort to involve segregated populations such as the Israeli Arab and ultra-Orthodox population.
Do you have the technology that attracts and engages candidates?
And there are companies that still waste money, time, manpower in pursuit of wealth. I mean the talents. The same talented developers who will turn the ideas that have been woven in the mind of the product manager into reality. It’s hard to find those fighters. Why fighters? Coding takes from you a lot of concentration, meeting time-bounded goals, frequent changes, and you as the end developer/engineer are required to make ideas into reality. Day after day for hours and hours in front of a screen. You usually manage to do that for a few years and then decide to develop into a more managerial role, like a product manager or in senior positions, which lowers the “junior” development load. Today the young developers know their value to companies and they also know that despite the strong need for their hands — they are as good as the software they develop. Consider them powerful tools, like a workhorse that can carry the company from one place to another. Yet, it will last for on average 2.5 years — and then the whole system needs to get calibrated again:
- Explore and define the needs of the job
- Start publishing on all possible platforms
- Receiving all different kinds of CV’s with different formats
- Ask for recommendations
- Ask for examples for technical experience
- Are you still counting? The process does not finish there and there are many more hours of technical interviews.
This results in more contracts with freelancers, a very large turnover rate and most importantly, a very low hit rate.
A fresh example comes from the recruiting report of a well known, large company in the hi-tech field that is well representative of the industry: In 2019, out of 3,000 interviewed candidates, the company has hired only 150. That shows an absurd hit-rate of 0.5%.
So what are my take-aways from this long and tedious process?
- What does an A4 Resume sheet have to do with the practical, technical skills of a software engineer?
It just represents the fact that the recruiter understands little-to-none about this arena. - Besides the problem of time and money waste, it damages the DNA and morale within the team and company.
We are in 2020, let’s adopt innovation — CVs are so 2005.
In the double diamond model, when you see a lot of problems in a particular field, you have to choose and focus on one problem and then offer several solutions to each problem. For this case, I will list some points that poor can significantly improve in the recruitment world in 2021.
“The competition to hire the best will increase in the years ahead. Companies that give extra flexibility to their employees will have the edge in this area.” — Bill Gates
You don’t have to wait for a Coronavirus-style pandemic to allow an employee to work from home one day a week.
You have to differentiate between the sum and its parts — to understand that each role encapsulates a completely different target audience. Each target audience has different needs. The “one-for-all” system that fits for everyone is an attitude that belongs to the past. I want to use this sentence as an analogy. We are different and HR departments need to understand this, starting from the candidate search and recruitment phase. For example, if we take the mobile developers audience who are a critical asset for hi-tech companies, today there is no recruitment tool that takes into consideration the needs, skill level, and practical experience of this target audience. What is the logic behind requiring a mobile developer to submit a resume? It is possible that he has just completed his military service and has no experience in a company at all. In the same breath, he may have experience and understanding in complex fields like AI and Machine Learning that are particularly relevant to hi-tech and startup companies. It’s a matter of personalization.
Did you cry about Generation Y? Generation Z is here. It has grown into tablets, it has accelerated customer service to adopt WhatsApp and it is here to revolutionize the world of recruitment into an interactive, online, transparent, fast, and direct service. The ball is not only in the field of the big tech company anymore. In this world, not far is the day where companies are rated by the end employees/candidates instead of the other way around.
Think robots. AI technology can already be used today for better elimination of unsuitable candidates at this stage. using technology that can sift through a candidate’s technical skills is irreplaceable because it saves at least 3 thick steps in the HR department recruitment process. If this gap was closed using a smart platform, the company could put this time and money into more important things like investing in the employees.
Put your efforts into software that will hire your new software engineer.
In summary, we have to move on. The year is 2020 and we are still wasting money on old recruiting methods. It’s time to adopt and cherish technology where it’s good for this process as well.
Fun fact: The first CV was written by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1482. The first platform for displaying mobile developer works was invented in 2020.
