Three critical elements to power-up your approach

Amplify your High Volume Hiring

Three critical elements
to power-up your approach

High volume hiring has always been complex.
But today it’s more challenging than ever.

Turnover rates in hourly jobs create relentless demand, and systems for finding the right talent are often not connected or powerful enough.

It’s common for businesses hiring hourly candidates to replicate the processes and systems they use for professional recruitment. But this isn’t effective. It pays to think differently. If you don’t fit your talent strategy to the unique needs of high volume hiring, your system won’t provide the power you need.

A successful high volume recruitment strategy combines three critical elements: Technology. People. Process. Fused together, these three strands help you amplify your output.

So, how can you power-up your hourly hiring strategy?

High volume hiring has always been complex.
But today it’s more challenging than ever.

Turnover rates in hourly jobs create relentless demand, and systems for finding the right talent are often not connected or powerful enough.

A successful high volume recruitment strategy combines three critical elements: Technology. People. Process. Fused together, these three strands help you amplify your output.

So, how can you power-up your hourly hiring strategy?

This guide explores:

How technology enables high volume recruitment. If the right tech stack isn’t used effectively, you won’t be able to unlock its full power.

How a people-first approach to high volume recruiting sets your organization apart.

Why process and strategy are the final strands for success. Without an effective process, you’ll fail to capture today’s talent.

Technology matters, but how you use it matters more

Technology has transformed the talent industry at all levels, from mobile recruitment tools, to artificial intelligence in sourcing, interview and assessment processes. It’s hard to keep up. But to increase speed of hire and reduce costs, volume recruitment needs tech.

Admin burden

High volume recruiting often means mundane, repetitive tasks. Take interview scheduling, for example. Your recruiter might need to arrange interviews for 10 candidates. It might take three calls to get through to each candidate before an interview is confirmed. Those 30 calls will take up a large chunk of their day.

Process overload

High volume recruiting means hiring the same profile of candidate over and over. If your application or interview stages aren’t automated, the process becomes slow and inefficient. If candidates don’t feel the process is moving fast enough, they will be easily swooped up by competitors.

The deal-breaker

Hourly candidates don’t engage in the same way professional hires do. Your recruiters have to get creative in how they attract talent and find an approach that works for candidates’ day-to-day. That means putting everything in the palm of their hands. You need to create an easy, fast, mobile-optimized experience.

Technology, used in the right way, can supercharge your volume recruitment strategy:

Streamline scheduling

Interview scheduling software automates the entire hiring process. Candidates can select a suitable slot and confirm the meeting via email. This then adds the event to both the candidate and recruiter’s calendars. Now, a process that took days to finalize is confirmed within minutes of a candidate accepting an interview.

Scheduling software also avoids any unnecessary errors or meeting clashes. This means you’re not losing candidates because of minor admin issues.

Power your conversational AI capability

Automation and conversational artificial intelligence (AI) such as smart chatbots lets you move applicants through the hiring funnel at pace. Successful applicants can immediately schedule an interview to the next stage.

When it comes to candidate sourcing, AI tech spiders through a wide variety of job sites and channels – much more than an average recruiter can possibly do manually. This allows recruiters to review much larger talent pools and find more candidates.

Lastly, chat simulation software can take over answering queries, screening candidates, scheduling interviews, and framing questions that need to be asked. In today’s market, immediate feedback is key to a positive candidate experience. By utilizing conversational AI, hourly jobseekers are guided quickly and easily through the process. More importantly, candidates get that instant contact at different touchpoints of the journey to keep them on board.

Switch on around-the-clock hiring

Technology means that volume recruiting is available 24-hours. Candidates can have their questions answered and schedule interviews even while your recruiters are offline. Having on-demand access to the hiring process – even when they’re ‘on the go’ – keeps talent engaged with you, and not your competitor.

But the benefits aren’t limited to jobseekers. With the right tech, your organization can check the status of open positions and respond to candidates in real time. Turning on 24/7 hiring means you have access to a larger talent pool.

Unlock the power of mobile

Meet hourly talent where they are.

The overwhelming majority (70%) of US jobseekers use mobile devices to search for jobs.

It’s no surprise candidates are turning to their phones to job search. Mobile-based recruiting helps remove roadblocks when unnecessary logins or uploads are turned off. One-click apply options and automated reminders keep jobseekers connected and informed every step of the way.

Mobile also allows you to reach a much wider pool of candidates. Not all hourly workers can access a computer.

Get metrics that matter

Real-time data allows your business to look at specific hourly jobs, like cashiers or waitstaff, in a specific location. You can get fast answers to key questions like: Why is the attrition rate high here? Do job descriptions need to be updated to accurately describe the day-to-day environment and culture? Is compensation an issue? Maybe it’s the manager?

What’s more, data lets you actively address candidate slowdowns, discover trouble spots in applicant success, and find trends in scheduling and offers. Real-time insights can help you understand these nuances and adjust quickly. By accessing analytics, recruiters are also able to drill down on activity by stage, requisition, location, or date.

Key elements:

Automate anything that doesn’t need the human touch. Get back time to focus on what matters: connecting with candidates.

Don’t automate a broken process – fix the process, then use technology to accelerate it.

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Technology alone won’t help you hire better. Optimizing how people use it will. The danger around technology is over or underusing it.

A powerful high volume program requires the right balance between tech and touch.

Plug in the personal touch

To supercharge your talent process, you need the right people, driving the right process, at the right time.

Your team needs to be hardwired into all things volume recruitment. Because research shows that, without the human touch and meaningful, enthusiastic interactions, you simply won’t reach today’s workers.

It’s not possible to automate the whole process and expect the right candidate outcomes. Face time with prospective employees is crucial. So, when can you add the human touch alongside the power of technology?

It’s not a tug-of-war between tech and touch. One should complement the other.

You can strike the right balance by using the human element at key stages:

Put a face to the process

When hiring hourly workers, candidate ‘ghosting’ is a top challenge for 38% of Talent Acquisition (TA) professionals and recruiters (TalentBoard 2022). Avoid people dropping off by engaging them with the right experience from the get-go.

Conduct a ‘pre-close’ interaction at the job offer stage. After a meaningful personal interaction with your recruiter, candidates feel an increased sense of accountability and loyalty. This means they’re more likely to show up on their first day.

To meet or not to meet?

There are some things that just can’t be communicated by tech. After qualifying candidates in online stages, schedule in-person meetings so successful applicants can ask questions – and recruiters can get a real feel for the person they’re hiring.

This helps manage expectations before you send an official offer.

Follow up to scale up

Consistent communication: two words that have a huge impact. Maintaining clear lines of communication makes for an efficient hiring process and paints a strong image of your organization.

Develop a follow-up process. Personally touch base with successful candidates after an interview and send out any follow-up information quickly. Within hours not days. If you lose engagement, your candidates will go elsewhere.

Be the employer of choice

High volume hiring is a two-way street. Employers are looking for skilled talent, jobseekers want to work for an employer that embodies their values. Does your business have the right employer brand to appeal to the hourly talent you need?

An authentic and relevant brand story is your competitive advantage. Your company culture should be embedded into comms from the start of the process in channels where applicants are engaged – such as in job ads or interviews. But it’ll come across even more strongly when communicated by a real person.

The human touch allows your employer brand to shine through clearly and authentically during personal interactions.

Key elements:

Jobseekers are also less likely to ‘ghost’ if they have had a positive experience with another person, not just a piece of tech. Don’t forget the power of human interaction.

Use tech to solve the admin aspects and to streamline the process. But there must be a person at the end to collate information, analyze data, and review candidates.

Do you have the right people, trained in the right way? If someone is interviewing or spending time with applicants – face to face, virtually, or over the phone – make sure they know how to build connections.

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The fusing of technology and people will help engineer a powerful approach to secure hourly talent. But without the right strategic approach, volume recruiting will fail to get off the ground…

Process creates the final strand for success

Competition for hourly talent is fierce. High volume hiring processes have zero room for error. They must be speedy and simple.

The first thing candidates want from their journey with a potential employer is an easy application process. A repetitive, slow or disjointed process might cause them to drop out immediately.

If you’re running through multiple phases of screening, assessment, and interviews, it’s time to question: Is this really necessary? Are there opportunities to make the process simpler?

There are some easy ways to optimize your volume recruiting process:

Work your workforce planning

How are you handling workforce planning? In the current market, hiring needs are always changing. You need an agile team that can quickly respond to changing business demands. The answer could be leaning on a partner to outsource part or all of your internal processes and teams.

Define the right persona

Even if you know the most common profiles, get back to the floor. The roles you have been hiring for forever will most likely have shifted significantly in focus, or even in skills required, over the last few years.

What is important in that role today? Have any of the ‘must have’ requirements evolved, or even disappeared? Make sure you know who you’re talking to

Get market insights that really matter

Once the person you want to hire has been identified, do you know where to find them? Do enough of them exist in the area you are hiring? What are they paid? Who is the competition? Having access to this information in invaluable. Use these insights to lead your recruitment strategy and even business planning.

Make sure your sourcing strategy is sound

When it comes to volume recruitment, you can’t rely on LinkedIn advertising alone. The key is grassroots sourcing. Candidates often come from the local area. Make it as easy as possible for them to walk in and ask about a role.

Local communities are always happy to help. Religious organizations, sports clubs, housing groups, and charities will go the extra mile to align those in need with opportunities. Make the time to ask. Job advertising and partners can then fill gaps in local organic traffic.

Assess and select, or streamline?

Should you use assessments at all? If you choose to, where and when? Formalized assessment tools are useful. They can give candidates a sense of the role and help prioritize high quality candidates.

But do they do this for you? Or are you running a legacy battery of tests that don’t have much relevance to your open roles, or are slowing down the candidate journey? Try your own process out to sense check how it feels from the outside. This can help to identify unnecessary stages.

Deliver on DEI

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is high on the agenda, and rightly so. To amplify diversity and reflect the communities you serve, you need to apply the DEI lens to the entire talent process.

Are you looking in the right places? Do you understand hiring metrics throughout the funnel, and at what point people might be exiting the process? Are you truly diverse in the way that is displayed on job descriptions? Is your recruitment process inclusive?

There might be a new talent pool out there just waiting to work for you.

Key elements:

Process is the powerline to your high volume hiring strategy. But it’s not one-size-fits all. Make the process work for your business. Test out your current strategies and identify the pain points.

Not every element of your current hiring strategy may need changing. Small tweaks to the process can make a huge difference.

Powering a successful high volume recruitment strategy

To power up your high volume hiring capability, you need to plug in all three elements: Technology. People. Process.

Technology solves the problem of hiring at scale, and with speed. But without people and process, your organization won’t deliver the right experience to beat the competition. Only the three working together will create an agile high volume strategy that can be fine-tuned and amplified to your exact needs.

If you need help fusing these elements and powering-up your strategy, connect with one of our experts today.

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When it comes to talent technology, artificial intelligence solutions have been gaining the most traction over the previous three years.

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Myth number 5:

Operationalizing AI technology in my business will be straightforward

When it comes to talent technology, artificial intelligence solutions have been gaining the most traction over the previous three years. During the pandemic, a gulf opened up between organizations who’d invested in technology and those who had not. Those who had successfully operationalized tech pre-2020 found it easier to pivot operations from office to home environments and many companies made it a priority to ensure they would not be caught out in future.

Before the height of pandemic lockdowns, AI adoption was most prevalent in the front office, with the primary focus being in business functions such as risk and compliance, or measuring consumer behaviours. Only 10% of companies reported adoption of AI in their talent function, according to McKinsey’s The State of AI in 2020 reporting.

A 2019 study by Oracle and Future Workplace suggested that half of all employees were using some form of artificial intelligence at work, with 65% ‘optimistic, excited and grateful’ about having robot co-workers. Furthermore, artificial intelligence was changing how employees interacted with their managers. According to the report, 64% of employees trusted a robot more than their manager and more than four in five (82%) believed artificial intelligence could do things better than their managers.

With the impact of AI still in its infancy, the key challenge for businesses – according to employees – was to simplify its use, with 34% asking for a better user interface, 30% asking for best practice training and 30% wanting a personalized experience.

“Our results reveal that forward looking companies are already capitalizing on the power of AI. As workers and managers leverage the power of AI in the workplace, they are moving from fear to enthusiasm as they see the possibility of being freed of many of their routine tasks and having more time to solve critical business problems for the enterprise,” said Future Workplace founding director Jeanne Meister.

Though the early stages of this period saw most organizations investing with extreme caution, the continued evolution of AI tech for talent management more than accelerated with substantial funding for AI tech firms specializing in talent solutions being announced in the hundreds of millions.

Fast-forward post-pandemic – where artificial intelligence techniques like machine learning and natural language processing provided vital information and predictions about the spread of the virus – and more and more companies are operationalizing artificial intelligence to drive strategic business value.

This is especially true in HR with the unprecedented speed of economic recovery causing significant skills and talent shortages globally, making data, insight and talent management strategies and solutions mission critical for many CEOs.

Indeed, by the end of 2024, 75% of organizations will shift from piloting artificial intelligence projects to operationalizing them, according to a report by Gartner, making it their number one trend in data and analytics technology.

Scaling challenges

In the talent and recruitment sector, artificial intelligence providers have done extensive development and research to ensure that their interfaces are modern and intuitive, making them easier to use for clients. They can also offer a wealth of additional insights to end users to aid evaluation and decision making in recruitment, with the potential to replace more static systems like applicant tracking systems.

However, moving from piloting an individual artificial intelligence program to scaling it across an entire department or product is challenging, with many struggling to reach the full operational potential of artificial intelligence technology.

As Manasi Vartak, CEO and founder of AI scaling platform Verta writes in Harvard Business Review: “AI is most valuable when it is operationalized at scale. For business leaders who wish to maximize business value using AI, scale refers to how deeply and widely AI is integrated into an organization’s core product, service and business process.

“Unfortunately, scaling AI in this sense isn’t easy. Getting one or two AI models into production is very different from running an entire enterprise or product on AI. And as AI is scaled, problems can scale too.”

So what are the issues to avoid?

The first challenge is around gaining buy-in from employers whose job roles will be impacted within a new operating model. In talent acquisition for example, different considerations need to be worked through depending on whether you have a segmented model, or a team of 360 recruiters.

However, adoption of AI is only going to continue to grow. More than a third of companies already use AI and 42% are exploring AI implementation in 2023, according to data from IBM. Businesses need to acknowledge that recruitment job roles – and a strong adoption strategy requires organizations to prepare their people for the skills they’ll need to leverage AI effectively.

This means providing ongoing training and enablement on new AI technology that moves beyond the purely functional. A stronger focus on data analysis and working with enhanced data sets is a must.

In turn, this should free up talent acquisition professionals to focus on what they do best, which is to form strong, trusted partnerships with the business, have conversations with candidates and make personal connections.

Scaling challenges

So what are the issues to avoid?

This means providing ongoing training and enablement on new AI technology that moves beyond the purely functional. A stronger focus on data analysis and working with enhanced data sets is a must.

Expert commentary

Erica Titchener
Global Head of Technology and Analytics, AMS

Gaining ROI for your AI investment

Technology in HR recruiting has been around for a while, but the level of insight you get when you introduce artificial intelligence that include additional data points recruiters aren’t accustomed to can be daunting.

This means that in order to successfully integrate AI technology and get a return on investment, businesses need to engage all relevant stakeholders who might be impacted by the tool and work out exactly what outcome they want. It might be efficiency, it might be workforce visibility, it might be getting to candidates quicker. Work out what you actually want to solve before purchasing.

Some vendors don’t appreciate that in large organizations, you need to make decisions at certain stages of a process that require data points that don’t feed into AI systems, such as those around compliance, or proof of accreditation. Secondly, focus on integration with your core HR platform.

While many vendors say you can use AI interfaces for intelligence alongside another system of record, the truth is talent professionals need as much data as possible in one place to make decisions.

As soon as you miss one of these key data points and a user has to go elsewhere, you start to lose adoption.

Another consideration when operationalizing artificial intelligence is the need to understand the change management program that goes alongside it. When working with clients who have implemented technology but are struggling with return on investment, more than 50% of the time the organization didn’t fully understand the impact of the technology they were implementing nor accurately articulated the benefits proposition of doing so.

In some cases, they massively oversold what the technology could do without providing programmatic help in the background, or in others they tried to creep it into the organization under the radar, because they were scared of change management. In both cases, adoption will ultimately fail.

It’s important to remember that bringing in efficiencies with artificial intelligence changes people’s roles. If you have a team that has been very manual in the past, it will inevitably have headcount implications. Someone who spent 50% of their time doing an administrative task might now only spend 15%, with the rest being value add to the business. This requires a different skillset and might even be a different person. New skills are required.

Finally, many organizations make the mistake of deploying technology but not putting any structure or accountability into place for adoption. IT implements the technology and works on changes without fully understanding what the business is trying to achieve. What is needed is a business partner or analyst whose primary role is to get return on investment from the platform. You might be paying a lot for the software, but if you don’t have this person in place, you will struggle to gain full value from your investment.

Expert commentary

Florenta Teodoridis

Associate Professor Strategy, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

The future of artificial intelligence

When we talk about the impact of AI on the future of work, often we take the view that AI is set and we’re just waiting for the impact to unfold. This isn’t the case.

Artificial intelligence is a developing technology and the choices we make will affect how it impacts the future of work. We could choose to take a direction that focuses on the automation of existing tasks, which will push more displacement of people from jobs, or we could focus on building technology that complements the work individuals do.

An example is the potential benefits of AI in healthcare and education, where you can offer customized treatment to patients or education opportunities for individuals. If you think about education in particular, we haven’t reformed how we teach people in some time. One instructor teaches a class, but each individual learns differently. AI will always ask us to customize how we teach people – it will offer complementary teaching to individuals, rather than displacing existing teachers.

When thinking about how AI affects recruitment, it’s important to remember that AI is a goal, not a technology. Put simply, the aim of AI is to automate every task a human being can do. As technology advances, the more tasks AI is able to perform. However, there are always points at which we cannot push any further, as humans are predictable in some ways, but not others.

It’s also important to remember that we are looking for an algorithm to give us a perfect answer, or the perfect hire. However, as humans, we never have the perfect answer. Everything we do has a bias included, whether explicit or implicit. It’s a very high bar to expect artificial intelligence to solve everything for us, when the algorithms are simply mimicking our own human behavior – and we haven’t solved our own biases yet.

With so many different tools providing
information on different areas, it can be easy for users to become overwhelmed by data

Florenta Teodoridis

A second challenge around AI implementation is the quality of integration with existing systems in the talent acquisition process. While AI tools can streamline hiring processes, reduce bias in selection and identify best fit candidates, they still need to be integrated into a business’ existing ecosystem to ensure that all critical external and internal data points are available to decision makers throughout the recruitment process.

However, with so many different tools providing information on different areas, it can be easy for users to become overwhelmed by data or frustrated at having to go off system to obtain missing information. This can lead them to stop using AI tools and return to old ways of recruiting, diminishing ROI.

To avoid this, organizations are taking a two-fold approach. The first step is in the procurement stage, where it’s imperative to ensure you understand the reason behind and expected outcome from utilizing talent technology. The fewer tools your recruitment team needs to learn, the better the chance of integration succeeding and the more valuable the output.

Secondly, many organizations have enormous ‘technical debt’ – existing legacy technological systems that are unwieldy, out of date and unable to support integration. Transforming these systems and building in new functionality is a huge challenge, requiring organizations to change the skillset of their technology and IT teams too. As technology requirements grow, so does the need for those with the skills available to lead these changes.

Finally – and building on the previous point about the need for new skills in IT to manage transition – many organizations fail to build roles into their operating models and business cases that focus on the overall success and evolution of the technology they use. In order to maximize the relationship with an artificial intelligence technology partner, organizations need to be aware of the full capabilities of the technology and how its use can evolve as integration grows.

“Technology will continue to develop, impact and transform the world of work and recruitment processes.”

A strategic adoption plan may start with the use of one element of a technology, but should then take a long-term approach to maximizing its capabilities with ongoing integration. This requires a team who understand an organization’s strategic business aims and can match this to technological key performance indicators.

After all, one thing businesses can be sure about is that technology will continue to develop, impact and transform the world of work and recruitment processes. Ensuring you have a team who can keep on top of advances in artificial intelligence and build use cases into your strategic goals is vital to future success.

If you have any questions regarding your tech and digital capabilities

Myth #1:
Talent technology will replace the need for recruiters and sourcers

Myth #2:
Once launched, technology will start looking after itself

Myth #3:
Today’s workforce is more tech enabled

Myth #4:
I’ll lose my talent acquisition employees to digital transformation

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Business and HR leaders are facing unprecedented change. The way we work, the way we recruit and how we engage our employees are all evolving post-pandemic, with technological revolution at the forefront.

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Myth number 4:

I’ll lose my talent acquisition employees to digital transformation

It’s important to remember that digital transformation isn’t just about technology. Rather, it’s a fundamental shift in how we operate our businesses, deliver value to our customers and build the future. It’s about culture change, not just implementing new technology.

This, of course, requires humans to set the parameters and strategy. Technology isn’t going to stop people from working – though it will change the roles and type of work we do. Our role is to make sure this change is for the better, not worse.

Garry Kasparov is a chess grandmaster who infamously became the first world champion to lose a match to a computer, when IBM’s Deep Blue beat him in 1997. For some, this marked the point at which artificial intelligence began to outsmart humanity.

Now a commentator and author on technology, business, politics and human rights, Kasparov argues that artificial intelligence and machine learning’s potential to push boundaries in data analysis is almost limitless – but that humans will always have the final say.

“This type of AI doesn’t care why something works, as long as it works. These machines even teach themselves better ways to learn, effectively coding themselves iteratively,” writes Kasparov.

“This is a brave new world, one in which machines are doing this that humans do not know how to teach them to do, one in which the machines figure out the rules – and if we are lucky, explain them to us. If this sounds threatening instead of amazing, you’ve been watching too many dystopian Hollywood movies.
Humans will still set the goals and establish the priorities.

“Our real challenge is to avoid complacency, to keep thinking up new directions for AI to explore. And that’s one job that can never be done by a robot,” he adds.

What tasks are automated?

This is particularly applicable to the recruitment sector, where technology is only just beginning to impact work, mainly through automation of repetitive tasks. But how?

PwC’s 2022 HR Tech survey asked 688 HR leaders based in the US about their technology usage and challenges. It found that some of the top HR problems facing companies today include HR insights and data (39%), recruiting and hiring (39%), modernization of HR systems (36%), learning and development (28%) and retention of key talent (27%).

Technology interventions in these areas are allowing talent acquisition professionals to become more strategic and less admin-based. This is particularly important in a time of rapid hiring and a competitive market. Technology-enhanced tasks can be as simple as automated interview scheduling, freeing up recruiters from making endless phone calls. They can include chatbots to ask pre-interview questions – particularly useful in high-volume recruitment as we say in chapter one – or provide videos or interactive content to increase a candidate’s understanding of the role. Chatbots also aid global hiring, allowing you to translate responses into different languages and broaden your talent pool.

Another area that automation can reduce strain on talent professionals is in the onboarding process. Digital signature software can reduce paperwork and speed up offers. Automated messaging can reduce time spent chasing candidates or managers for documents and can also improve engagement during the down period between offer and start dates.

Expert commentary

Joy Koh
Head of Growth and Advisory APAC, AMS

Technology is a talent acquisition enabler

In its simplest form, digital transformation in talent acquisition is about the automation of administrative tasks. In the current climate, we’re all being asked to do more with less. Recruitment volumes have skyrocketed in recent months, so technology is there to take away admin from teams so they can focus on valued-added, relationship-based tasks with candidates and account managers.

The types of tasks being automated include interview scheduling – no one wants to spend time making ten calls to secure one interview – compliance issues, such as getting feedback from managers on candidates, and pre-employment onboarding, such as sending reminders and collating necessary documents.

As a result of this, the skillset of a recruiter is changing. By removing administrative tasks, recruiters now need to spend more time on the relationship building side of work. When we look for recruiters now, we’re looking for a great relationship builder, for someone who is proactive in headhunting and engaging candidates. We’re also specializing more – it’s less about 360 recruiters and more about specialist skills.

Technology is also important to get the best talent acquisition team. The best recruiters want to see automation of administrative tasks, so that they can focus on more strategic roles. They’ll want to understand your technology landscape before joining – a vital factor in such a competitive market.

From a candidate perspective, technology needs to improve their experience. It’s no use putting in application technology that makes them fill out five separate forms. It’s about how you design technology to put candidates at the centre of the application process. Make it easier for them to apply, to refer friends and crucially, to onboard. Send them videos from the CEO outlining the organization’s wider aims. Book in welcome video calls with team members. Give them information on their role and sector. Technology can play a huge part in engaging employees even before their first day.

Expert commentary

Francesca Gino
Author and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Taking your people with you during change

There are many effective organizations that were born remote and are still operating remotely. They attract great talent and retain great talent. Whether in traditional or remote organizations, many leaders invest years cultivating an effective culture – one that is both strategically relevant, because it prioritizes the behaviours essential to the success of your business – and strong, in the sense that employees trust that it is real and value it. Such cultures help companies attract and retain great people and contribute to fantastic bottom-line performance.

Working remotely, many leaders believe, could weaken your organization’s culture. Will your culture take a hit because people can’t meet in person, making it harder to solidify their shared beliefs? Will they be less able to use your culture as a roadmap for making good decisions in a remote environment? How can you continue to build and leverage your culture while your organization is operating remotely?

Research has shown that even when you create a culture that is strategically aligned and strong (that is, widely shared and intensely valued), it won’t help you over the long run unless you also develop a culture that is adaptive in real time. In fact, a study found that organizations that were strategically aligned, strong, and had built in the capacity to adapt quickly to dynamic environments earned 15% more in annual revenue compared to those in the same industry that were less adaptable.

Cultural adaptability – which reflects your organization’s ability to innovate, experiment, and quickly take advantage of new opportunities – is especially important now.

Leaders must continue to cultivate their company’s culture to help people stay focused on the most important initiatives even as they contend with the challenges and continuously changing conditions of the world we live in.

That’s what leaders need to focus on. Adaptability will lead to faster change. Not only do leaders need to have discussions with their employees about this: they need to model adaptability themselves. By staying curious, showing vulnerability, opening themselves up to the opinions of others. People are much more likely to accept change, and get on board with change, if they are given the opportunity to provide input and be heard.

These interventions allow talent professionals to focus on engagement and building specialist skills in sourcing or business partnering. It also provides space for upskilling, so that recruiters can continue to develop the skills needed to meet the future of work.

Of course, digital transformation brings challenges too. Our previous whitepaper Four Critical Talent Priorities Defining the New Workplace examined how digital transformation is affecting workplaces, finding that the speed of change is putting extreme pressure on talent acquisition teams to not only bring in people with the right skills, but also revolutionize their processes to become quicker and more efficient.

This is leading to some organizations bringing in technology without sufficiently reviewing or preparing people to use it. The knock-on effect of this is unsettling to existing employees, who are not used to the pace of change and struggle to adapt to new processes and systems. Here, organizations need to ensure sufficient upskilling, training and ongoing engagement to ensure their talent teams see technology as an enabler, not a threat.

Ultimately, technology is a talent acquisition enabler that is designed to make the life of a talent professional easier. At its core, technology should automate mundane tasks providing more space for professionals to fulfil strategic business aims.

It should also improve a candidate’s journey from application through to onboarding, providing a slick, efficient experience that reflects well on the company’s brand. It should engage them and provide opportunities to understand more about the role and organization.

Finally, talent technology should be part of a wider organizational strategy to meet the ongoing challenges of digital transformation. Data insights, machine learning and analytics are all going to become commonplace in our working worlds, so talent professionals need to be at the forefront of understanding these technologies and implementing them.

If you have any questions regarding your tech and digital capabilities

Myth #1:

Talent technology will replace the need for recruiters and sourcers

Myth #2:
Once launched, technology will start looking after itself

Myth #3:
Myth 3: Today’s workforce is more tech enabled

Myth #5
Operationalizing AI technology in my business will be straightforward

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How the TA community can help accelerate the energy transition

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The Renewable Energy Talent Dilemma

How the TA community can help accelerate the energy transition

Introduction

According to IRENA’s World Energy Transitions Outlook: 1.5°C Pathway, employment in the renewable energy sector will need to more than triple, from 12 million in 2020 to 38 million by 2030 if we have any hope of delivering on global climate commitments. Such is the demand that if we simply recycle the existing pool of talent and supplement this with school and college-leavers we will be nowhere near to achieving the growth that the renewable energy sector needs.

Those of us involved in attracting and fulfilling the talent demands of the renewables sector have an opportunity to play a crucial part in accelerating the energy transition. In this paper we explore three ways in which the talent community can help:

Introduction

Lynne Gardner

Sector Managing Director
Engineering & Industrials

David Ingleson

Client Director

Changing mindset on transferable skills

Diversify the talent mix

Build an attractive career destination

Changing mindset on transferable skills

Embracing the idea of recruiting for transferable skills and dropping the existing notion that prior experience in the renewables industry is required to succeed, is one strategy which the industry can take to meet the predicted demand for jobs in the renewable energy sector.

There is plenty of evidence that talent acquisition professionals can draw on to challenge hiring managers and business leaders on their perception of transferrable skills and build the case for recruiting outside the sector.

Not all renewable experts work in the sector

IRENA reports that 838,000 people were employed in the renewables sector in the US in 2020. But according to our research carried out on SeekOut in December 2021, there were just short of 1.2 million people who categorised themselves as being skilled in renewables – nearly 45% more than are reported to be employed in the sector.

We see a similar picture in the UK. IRENA reported 138,000 people employed in the sector but according to our SeekOut research, 365,000 categorised themselves as having renewable energy skills – more than 2.5 times the number of people employed in the sector.

Not all jobs require formal training

IRENA’s Renewable Energy and Jobs Annual Review 2021 also shows that around half of all jobs in the sector only require minimal formal training and a non-degree level education, meaning that they are very accessible. This means that people with practical problem-solving skills and a good level of manual dexterity should be deemed as having highly transferable skills, and this talent pool could be available from a variety of industry sectors.

20% are corporate roles
In addition, if we assume that between 10 and 15% of all roles within renewable energy companies will sit in corporate and administrative functions (20/22% according to the US Department of Energy) there is much more likelihood that this proportion of roles can be filled by people who have no previous experience in the sector (apart from highly specialist regulatory or legal roles).

The most requested skills are universal
We can also see that the top five skills featured in the job adverts posted by the top US renewables employers (January 2021 to January 2022) are universal. They were Communication 71% (of all adverts), Analysis (41%), Written Communications (34%), Verbal Communications (34%) & Planning (30%).

‘Project Management’ is the skill mentioned most often in professional profiles of candidates working in the UK renewables sector (28.6%). ‘Management’ is listed third at 27.8%. Other skills making up the top 10 include ‘Engineering’, ‘Project Planning’, ‘Business Development’, ‘Business Strategy’ and ‘Customer Service’. (AMS research carried out via SeekOut and TalentNeuron).

All these skills are attributed via self-assessments and not necessarily listed as requirements by decision makers in the hiring process. However, if talent acquisition teams were able to highlight trends of this nature, they could open new pools of candidates outside of the sector.

What industries can we recruit from?

AMS studied the industries that professionals worked in prior to joining renewables across the US, UK, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Fairly unsurprisingly, oil and gas came top of the list.

In many cases candidates have worked for a company transitioning from oil and gas to renewables. In these cases, candidates can move internally and are likely to adapt more quickly as they already understand company processes, values, systems, communications styles and may have established relationships with colleagues.

The 2021 UK Offshore Energy Workforce Transferability Review from the RGU Energy Transition Institute found that 70% of the UK oil and gas workforce have medium skills transferability to other energy areas and another 20% have high transferability.

This is particularly evident in the off-shore wind sector as high levels of transferability exist within manufacturing, planning, maintenance, and operations – all of which are aligned to some of the major challenges associated with large engineering projects in deep sea environments.

However, The Society for Human Resource Management’s report ‘Preparing for an Aging Workforce’, shows that approximately one-quarter of the current energy sector workforce is over 55 years-old and within 7 years’ time will retire.

The oil and gas talent well will eventually run dry.

Second on the list of potential sources for renewables sector candidates are those coming straight from education, followed closely by those from engineering consultancies. These candidates are often already embedded within client organisations so can transfer into renewables with relative ease.

Notably, other sectors that feature high on the list are: the military, finance, automotive, defence and IT. All industries that require candidates with good technical competencies are good sources for transferable skills.

Encouragingly, we are already starting to see some evidence that companies are searching for the relevant skills, over sector experience.

AMS recently analysed the fastest growing role requirements in the renewables sector taken from job adverts in US.

Over the course of the last 12 months, the required skill, ‘Technical Direction’ has increased by 1592%. ‘Statistical Analysis’ has gone up by 677% and ‘Analytics’ by 510%. The biggest increases were seen in ‘Electric grid’ (1729%) and ‘Electric power systems’ (1637%). On the flip side, the requirement for ‘Renewable energy technologies’ knowledge dropped by 21% and ‘Renewable energy industry’ dropped by 4%.

There are of course some roles which will require specific experience but if companies can hone in on the most crucial, core skills and identify where those skills exist in other sectors they will open up new talent pools, and open the doors of the renewables sector to the next generation of the renewables workforce.

Actions for talent leaders

· Build skills from the ground upwards. An Early Careers & Campus strategy that targets recent graduates and entry-level talent will help support a strong workforce.

· Plan your talent pipeline. Work with an outsourced provider to map out where talent resources will come from, and where they may need to relocate to.

· Go beyond traditional hiring routes. Renewable energy needs to quadruple in size to meet net-zero targets. Identify professionals with transferrable skills outside the industry –such as in engineering, military, or oil and gas – to help widen the talent pool.

· Create training programs and reskilling initiatives. Get ahead of the skills gap by finding talent with similar skillsets, or 10-15 years’ transferrable experience, to retrain and reskill easily.

Back to topic selection

Diversify the talent mix

An alternative way that we can accelerate the energy transition is to embrace a diversity-led approach to attracting talent which will bring more diverse categories of talent into the sector.

As it stands today, within the renewables sector, only 32% of employees are women (UN Women and the UN Global Compact Office), and 11% are non-white. Women are also more likely to be employed in lower-paid, non-technical and administrative roles than technical, managerial, or policy-making roles. The numbers are even worse within the wind power sector, with only 20% of the workforce being women.

Taking an industry comparison, through a gender diversity lens, however, we can see that the renewables sector fares relatively well compared to other industries, outperforming the likes of the military, automotive, and oil and gas sectors, and fares quite well against the financial services sector. A similar story emerges from the data on ethnicity (except for the military).

^{Source: SeekOut}

We know that the renewables sector recruits heavily from these industries, so unless the net is widened, there could be a risk of potentially worsening the picture. This means that renewables companies need to diversify the sectors from which they source talent in the future.

One of these sectors is education. We know that 16% of all entrants into the renewables sector come straight from education, so to understand the future pipeline of talent, we conducted analysis of the 2022 graduation year in 30 leading universities in the UK, US and Europe for pure engineering-focused degrees and those with a renewables’ focus. Encouragingly, the analysis shows that renewables-focused university courses attract nearly twice as many more women than pure engineering courses, with around half (48.5%) of students in the renewables-focused courses being women, compared to just 24.9% of students in the pure engineering courses.

If we take another look at the data through an ethnicity lens, the results are less encouraging. We see that fewer Asian and Black candidates are enrolled on renewables-focused courses than pure engineering courses.

Our analysis also shows that the number of universities offering renewables-focused courses has grown significantly between 2011-2021, with the most encouraging statistic being that there has been a 55% increase in the number of universities in the US offering renewables-focused courses.

^{Sources: Britishuni.com, Studylink.com, Educations.com}

These results raise some interesting questions. Is the nearly 50/50 split (male/female) on renewables-focused courses enough, or should we push for the majority to be female to start correcting the sector imbalance? What can we do to ensure we attract more ethnically diverse participants in renewables-focused courses? How can we ensure that more courses and places are available at more universities?

Some universities are leading the way in this regard, and the institutions with dedicated research centres or easy access to renewable energy sources are ideally positioned to drive the agenda.

Actions for talent leaders

· Think differently. Find new channels to attract diverse talent and embrace the opportunities diversity affords. This includes better financial returns, supporting retention and reducing attrition, and delivering more innovative and creative solutions.

· Don’t miss out on early talent. Invest in graduate recruitment programmes and apprenticeships, develop better relationships with universities, and ensure you are recruiting in a gender-balanced and socially diverse way.

· Elevate your brand. Make yourself more attractive to diverse talent by building out engagement messages and successful diverse profiles.

· Consider different generational needs. There are four different generations in the workforce right now. Identify the needs of these diverse age groups and how you can offer career opportunities to suit them.

Back to topic selection

Build an attractive career destination

The third strategy that is needed to meet the ambitious growth of the renewable energy sector is to increase the relative attractiveness of the renewables sector to talent. Without it being an appealing option to those from other sectors, it will simply not be possible to enact the other two strategies that we have explored. 

The recent Most Attractive Employer Report (2021) from Universum shows that the top five aspects of employer attraction for engineering students are those that offer:

1. High future earnings
2. Training and development
3. Leadership opportunities
4. Secure employment 
5. Competitive salary

Based on this, the case for engineering students to consider the renewables sector for future employment is very strong.

With talent being in such demand in the renewables sector it’s likely that competitive salaries are being offered. According to the 2020 “Clean Jobs, Better Jobs” report, which salary and benefits within the renewables sector outperform those in traditional energy. 
As the renewables sector grows and new technologies emerge, the need to train and develop staff will be high.
As experience is built in a sector that needs to triple in size over the next decade, inevitable leadership opportunities will present themselves to those disposed towards managing and leading others. More leadership opportunities further reinforce the likelihood of high future earnings.
The renewables sector is seen as the long-term solution to our energy needs, and as a result, it offers highly secure employment.

Further analysis we carried out on the engineering community in the UK is very reassuring. When looking at how satisfied engineers are in the sector that they work, the energy/renewable/nuclear sector (excluding oil and gas) comes out on top. In all three categories of ‘salary satisfaction’, ‘job satisfaction’ and ‘feeling valued in job’, no other sector comes out more strongly than energy/ renewable/ nuclear.

As the table below shows, this is overwhelmingly positive for the industry.

^{Source: djsresearch.co.uk}

Engineers in the renewables sector are more satisfied with their salaries, their jobs and their sense of value than in all other sectors of engineering

^{Source: djsresearch.co.uk}

Employees within the renewables sector approve of their CEO 9% more and would recommend their company 7% more than their oil and gas counterparts

But talent acquisition professionals can’t afford to rest on their laurels. While people working within the renewables industry are more satisfied than other sectors, and, on paper, the industry ticks all the boxes for being an attractive place to work, persuading engineers from the oil and gas industry to make the leap from their current role will be tough.

The data shows that engineers in the oil and gas sector are least likely to be considering a change of job. Given that approximately one-quarter of the current energy sector workforce (the majority of whom are in oil and gas roles) is over 55, many may be sitting tight, knowing they can see themselves through to retirement.

As we have seen with the Universum data, money is still a significant consideration in terms of the attractiveness of employers and sectors, and, as the table below shows, the oil and gas sector is leading the way.

There is, of course, a growing concern in the oil and gas sector around future career prospects as you can see from the data provided by OGJS illustrated below. But remuneration and reward need to be comparable. It is the job of talent acquisition professionals to explain these nuances to hiring managers and provide them with the insights to build business cases for offers they are making.

Actions for talent leaders

· Be purpose driven. Many employees want to work for an ‘employer of purpose’ that embodies their values. It’s important to market yourself effectively and authentically, and be transparent about your energy transition journey.

· Gain trust. To promote a green vision for the future and sustainable goals, business leaders must communicate a clear, measurable plan to achieve this. You must also provide clarity on the challenges that lie ahead.

· Develop mutual understanding. For oil and gas companies transitioning to clean energy, prospective candidates will need to understand the continued reliance on oil and gas at this stage of the journey towards carbon neutrality.

· Be mindful of wider market conditions. In the current economic climate, candidates are seeking job security. Showing that you offer business stability will be crucial to attracting and retaining talent.

Case Study:
Multinational Energy Company

AMS is collaborating with a global energy giant to build a world-leading renewables division that will ensure they meet their net-zero commitments and tackle the skills shortage.

Since 2014 we have worked with the business across all hiring disciplines – internal mobility, experienced hiring, and emerging talent to deliver:

1600 hires per year in 26 countries globally
90% Hiring manager satisfaction
A 25% reduction in time-to-offer
EVP realignment and support for DE&I goals

The business could lean on AMS’ unmatched expertise for their full talent acquisition strategy – digitalisation, automation, enhanced candidate experience, and continuous improvement.

Back to topic selection

Conclusion

Our analysis shows that there are many ways in which talent acquisition teams globally can play a part in accelerating the energy transition. However, with the geopolitical instability we are experiencing and without significant movement on some of the more powerful enablers of the energy transition, such as transformational policy change, government-funded training/investment schemes and strategic reskilling programmes, there is only so much that can be achieved. These enablers require huge investment and political will, with bulletproof business cases to secure the necessary funds. So, let’s hope that the people in power can make the right decisions on our behalf and for our future so we can accelerate the energy transition for the benefit of everyone.

Whilst this paper merely skims the surface of the actions that need to be taken to address the challenges ahead, talent acquisition teams can play their part in helping the sector to achieve its ambitions. We hope that it gives you some hope and excitement for the future and provides food for thought in your efforts to find the talent needed to bolster the renewable energy sector.

If you would like to talk to us about recruiting for the energy or renewables sector, please get in touch.

_{Source of research data is SeekOut unless otherwise stated.}
_{Data accurate as of March 2022.}

^{Source of research data is SeekOut unless otherwise stated.}
^{Data accurate as of March 2022.}

The world of recruitment has changed dramatically in just a few decades. What was once an entirely human-centric endeavour, with people wading through printed resumes, making calls on telephones and searching rolodexes for contacts has morphed into the digital world of AI, applicant tracking systems and chatbots.

View the story

Myth number 3:

Today’s workforce is more tech enabled

The Great Resignation has led to global talent shortages, as employees re-evaluate what they want from work and working lives. As talent leaves the market, employers are facing an increasingly competitive battle to find the right people to fill roles, with wage inflation rampant.

In the US alone, nearly four million people quit their jobs each month in 2021 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with job openings at a record high. One area particularly oversubscribed is tech talent, with huge demand for digital specialists brought about by rapid transformation programs driven by the pandemic. Add in the freedom of remote work which is removing geographical barriers, and more people are feeling empowered to pursue better opportunities.

While the current market for talent in the tech industry is more challenging – Amazon shrank its workforce by 100,000 last quarter and Alphabet slowed recruitment – employment is still up 14% year-on-year.

Furthermore, it’s not just Silicon Valley that needs to hire technology talent. Citibank is hiring 4,000 tech specialists to revamp its operations.

Tech talent in demand

So what skills are actually in demand? According to McKinsey & Co’s ‘Tech Talent Tectonics’ paper, there are seven key areas companies are looking to recruit for: DevOps; platforms and products; automation; customer experience; cybersecurity; data management and cloud architecture.

Filling positions in these areas is proving a challenge. A survey of 1,500 business leaders by McKinsey found that 87% were not prepared to fill these skills gaps, while 61% of HR professionals believe that hiring developers will be their biggest challenge in the years ahead.

This is a global challenge too. Germany requires an additional 780,000 tech specialists by 2026 to meet the demands of its economy, while experts estimate a shortage of 3.5million cybersecurity jobs by 2025.

Clearly, traditional recruitment methods – increasing salaries, poaching talent from competitors, headhunting – isn’t going to be enough to meet the huge demand for technology specialists. So how can businesses succeed in such a challenging market?

Reskilling

One way is to develop in-house training to upskill and reskill existing employees, including those from non-technology backgrounds.

Financial giant JPMorgan invested more than $350million in providing upskilling programs to its employees and forecasting future workplaces skills, with a heavy focus on digital. The aim, according to CEO Jamie Dimon, was to help employees meet the challenges of a changing economy and workplace.

“The new world of work is about skills, not necessarily degrees. Unfortunately too many people are stuck in low-skill jobs that have no future and too many businesses cannot find the skilled workers they need,” said Dimon.

This chimes with the new hiring reality for many organizations. With the unemployment rate for tech talent in the US hitting 1.3% in March (a third of the national average of 3.6%), many companies are bypassing academic requirements to focus on skills-based recruitment alongside hiring from new regions.

Apple, Tesla and Google are among the organizations who have removed the need for a bachelor’s degree from some of their job requirements, while half of IBM’s US job openings do not require a formal degree. Hiring for skills and attitude and providing ongoing learning – both internal and external – is going to be a key way of developing the technological skills organizations need in the future.

The benefits of this new way of hiring extend beyond simply helping you develop the talent you need. It also improves employee engagement, social mobility and diversity within your organization.

Take the example of cloud software company Zoho Corp. Headquartered in Chennai, India with an international base in Austin, Texas, Zoho has run internal training programs for employees and tech apprentices since 2014. Its Zoho Schools of Learning run 12-18 month programs in software development and engineering, but also in softer skills like problem solving, communication and customer relations.

“We realized the futility of looking for so-called pre-qualified talent. First, there was a lot of competition for it, and second, college degrees didn’t really amount to much in our business,” said Chief Strategy Officer Vijay Sundaram in this interview with ComputerWorld.

“It all came down to what knowledge people had about technologies, as opposed to what they learned in an academic institution; how much they worked with customers and related problems. And that translated into measures of success,” he added.

Abandoning traditional hiring practices also meant Zoho was able to attract a more diverse population, hiring people from smaller towns and with underprivileged communities – tapping into a talent base rife with potential that had gone unnoticed by its competitors.

Technology talent is vital to the future success of almost every organization. With such a huge demand on a relatively small skillset, it’s vital businesses think creatively and move beyond traditional recruitment methods to fill this talent gap.

Expert commentary

Michelle Hainsworth
Managing Director, Talent Lab, Tech Skilling, AMS

How to beat the tech talent crunch

There is incredible demand for tech talent globally and the pandemic has seen organizations accelerate their tech strategies even quicker. However, there is a huge dearth of people with these skills. There simply isn’t enough talent out there.

Competing for the same talent means wage inflation, if indeed the talent exists, so we’re looking at how we can develop tech talent differently by pushing reskilling to the front through our tech skilling program.

First, we are looking at sourcing candidates with adjacent skills. They might be career changers, they might be those early in their careers, or they might be returning to work. We then onboard them, put them through a 6-12 week program to train them on tech skills or tech adjacent skills and then deploy them into workplaces. Training and continuous development is offered over a period of 18 months, before they convert into full-time employees with our clients.

The program addresses a couple of challenges. First, many businesses are struggling with the shortage of tech talent, but also with talent redeployment. They might have people whose roles are becoming redundant, so they want to retrain and reskill existing workforces rather than hiring externally. We know that the half-life of a job is about 2 ½ years now, so people are going to need to continually retrain.

Second, many organizations were slow to react to the move towards digital platforms. With such huge demand and accelerated growth, organizations are going to be facing tech talent shortages for some time.

Today, hiring isn’t just about getting people in through the door – it’s about what you do with them afterwards. The best people will not stay unless you offer them learning opportunities. Invest in a hire to retire lifecycle and help your people develop throughout their careers.

If you have any questions regarding your tech and digital capabilities

Myth #1:

Talent technology will replace the need for recruiters and sourcers

Myth #2:
Once launched, technology will start looking after itself

Myth #4:
I’ll lose my talent acquisition employees to digital transformation

Myth #5
Operationalizing AI technology in my business will be straightforward

Back to intro

The talent technology marketplace is huge – and it’s only going to get bigger. By the end of 2022, the global HR software market is expected to exceed $10bn, with the rate of growth in talent technology set to reach 13.5% by 2025.

View the story

Myth number 2:

Once launched, technology can look after itself

The talent technology marketplace is huge – and it’s only going to get bigger. By the end of 2022, the global HR software market is expected to exceed $10bn, with the rate of growth in talent technology set to reach 13.5% by 2025.

However, with this growing usage comes a challenge for talent technology companies to move beyond their individual areas of expertise and build out into more comprehensive offerings.

Boston Consulting Group breaks down talent technology offerings into six key areas, with specialist providers leading the market in each section. These areas include providers that anticipate future needs, assess skill levels, source internal and external talent, develop employee skills, embed workers in an organisation and manage performance.

The problem for users is the lack of integration between various technology providers. With no single solution available to practitioners, talent technology is often siloed, with a lack of understanding as to how to integrate it into a wider, holistic talent strategy.

While major tech players are now attempting to bridge this gap through partnerships – Microsoft Viva’s numerous integrations – and buyouts – Workday purchased employee feedback software Peakon in 2021 – the challenge remains.

There’s also the issue of digital overload. A report by HR technology provider Personio found that more than a third (37%) of employees said they used too many different digital tools at work, with an average of six different tools per team for people-related insights and tasks.

This leads to poor adoption from users, and can even slow down processes that it’s supposed to speed up. A quarter of HR professionals surveyed by Personio said that the number of systems used is frustrating employees and unnecessarily slowing down work.

Why talent technology implementations fail

So why do talent technology projects fail? HR technology media platform UNLEASH surveyed 700 talent leaders responsible for a combined $3bn technology budget about the challenges that derail implementations. It found that 40% of respondents reported three or more problems that directly impacted the success of a project, with only 16% believing that their projects were successful.

The three most common challenges encountered by organisations were users not being ready for the functionality, data not being clean enough and poor change management.

Significantly, the scale and cost of implementing new technology often ran away from leaders. Less than a quarter (22%) believed that talent technology projects adhered to budgeted costs, with even fewer (19%) managing to keep projects to allotted timelines. With such a poor start, it’s not a surprise that many projects fail to fulfil their objectives.

Changing the narrative

In order to improve the chances of technology implementation succeeding, organisations need to change the narrative around talent technology.

Firstly, technology is no longer simply about automating processes and talent acquisition systems, but is rather a tool to transform and grow business. This means that talent technology isn’t about one-off implementation, but rather forms part of an approach to maximising the potential of your talent strategy.

Understanding this leads us to understand that simply launching a new piece of technology isn’t enough to ensure success. Far too many organisations only get to grips with new technology implementation at the point of actual launch, without considering, consulting and getting buy-in from end users in the procurement stage.

Taking a step back and actually involving users in the process of choosing technology, while focusing on the desired outcomes of the technology allows organisations to achieve two things: a clear goal with expected return on investment, rather than muddied thinking brought about by shiny new features; and a focus on employee experience that speeds adoption and actually makes a process easier.

Expert commentary

Josh Bersin
Author and HR thought leader

The role of technology in talent acquisition

Technology plays a vital role in talent acquisition and recruitment. Today, as employees move more dynamically than ever, companies need intelligent systems for sourcing, advertising, marketing, assessment, and ongoing candidate communications. Tools like intelligent chatbots, skills-based job recommendations, video interviews, and AI-enabled assessment are common. So there are hundreds of tools to consider.

Unfortunately, however, most recruitment teams have a stack of older systems. The core tool of recruitment, the Applicant Tracking System (ATS), is more than 30 years old in design. Originally designed as a place to store, search, and index job applications, these systems have become critical but legacy in most organisations. How do you add new tools around these systems to scale?

Our research shows that highly successful companies are always upgrading and experimenting with new technology. AI, which started as an interesting idea, can now match job seekers to roles by skill, identify possible internal candidates, and even assess the probability a candidate will succeed. Many leading companies now let job seekers just “apply” for any job, and the systems decide which role or skill may fit them best. Once a candidate expresses interest, these tools can automatically feed the more information, schedule an interview, and eventually provide onboarding uniquely designed for that job.

We also see an explosion of new tools we call Talent Intelligence to scan millions of possible job seekers and help make decisions on non-traditional candidates, diverse populations, and adjacent jobs to help fill positions. As jobs change more rapidly than ever, these systems can assess the true “skills” needed in a job and then help recruiters find candidates with greater precision than ever before. These tools, which are the latest evolution in this market, amass data from billions of job seekers and use AI to match people to jobs in ways we never imagined.

While all these tools are important, our newest research still finds that recruiters are perhaps the most important role of all. As we looked at the use and prevalence of technology in our new research, we found that “Human-Centered Recruiting” is still the biggest factor in success. In other words, no matter what technology you adopt, it’s the human side that really makes a difference. So these tools, while magnificent in many ways, are still part of a very “human-centered” process that always comes down to culture, fit, and match with the team.

There’s no question that technology will always play a major role in recruiting, workforce planning, and long term organisational design. But as you arm up and upgrade your tool set (which is a never-ending process), make sure you train and talk with your recruiters too. They, in the end, are still the most important tool you have.

Secondly, organisations need to plan for ongoing adoption of the technology, with a long-term change management programme in place to ensure that users continue to update their skills and develop new case uses for the chosen platform.

One way of doing this is to incentivise employees to use and train on new technology platforms, whether through providing on the spot bonuses, extra time off or gifts and merchandising. According to PwC’s 2022 HR Tech Survey, this is one of the most effective ways of driving technology adoption, with an 85% success rate amongst companies that used this method.

Other options include optimising the technology for mobile use to meet employee demand for anytime, anywhere work, introducing elements of gamification to drive engagement and – more controversially – providing penalties for non-usage.

Thirdly, businesses need to invest in technology for the longterm, providing a roadmap and iterative methodology to continually drive return on investment. This might be about assessing technology partners across multiple dimensions, including ongoing support and training. The aim is to avoid costly relaunches or switching providers as the strategic needs of your business change by ensuring that your technology partner – and the training you provide – flexes with your new requirements.

The successful adoption of talent technology is about meticulous planning, ongoing training and constant evolution – much like any other key business process. Technology isn’t there to simply automate processes, it’s there to help organisations transform and grow. Launching some technology and then simply hoping it – or the people using it – work things out by themselves isn’t going to lead to success.

Expert commentary

Annie Hammer
Head of Technology Advisory, Americas, AMS

How to maximise technological adoption and avoid buyer’s remorse

There is a lot of technology on the market at the moment, which is busy and confusing. I’ve seen plenty of organisations get seduced by shiny product demos without understanding the core requirement and business outcomes you’re trying to drive.

To combat this, I recommend that businesses develop 3-4 scenarios that are specific to their organisation and ask tech providers to show how these scenarios are played out within their tools. It helps to bring up practical things that demos don’t show.

Then, it’s about avoiding tools with single use cases or duplication. A lot of times I’ll work with organisations that say ‘I need a CRM, or a chatbot, or a video interview tool’. That might be what you need, but you also need to understand the broader ecosystem and components within that. You might already have a tool that can provide some of the functionality you need, or you might need another tool that provides a wider use. It’s about looking at the broader picture and understanding the specific scenarios you need to accomplish with the tool specific to your business, rather than a general technological capability point of view.

There are several practical steps you can take when implementing new technology. First, involve end users in the selection process. Even if the ultimate decision lies with a manager, get forward-thinking users onboard to give their viewpoint and begin engaging with the technology. It can form part of a reward or development plan and helps socialise the technology amongst employees.

Let manager level employees be involved in localisation and specific business unit or regional needs. Once you’ve selected the tool, they can be involved in the implementation and design of the process.

When it comes to launch, get your team to feedback on the build in stages, rather than on completion. This allows HRIT to build and show functionality, with feedback coming from users who preview the technology. In addition, this builds in checkpoints along the way and reduces testing issues nearer launch.

You also need to plan for post-launch training and adoption. What’s the plan for 30 days post-launch? What’s the plan for six months? Or two years?

Having someone accountable for the evolution of technology is key, but make sure they are in place from the start so they avoid feeling overwhelmed by launch feedback. On that note, have a ‘fast-follow’ list of tasks that aren’t crucial for launch but need to be completed within three months. This allows for ongoing testing and development of the technology.

Finally, think about providing a platform for user voice, where end users can log issues or feedback. Add a mechanism for users to upvote issues, so that way you can prioritise the changes that need to be made based on real-time feedback.

So much new technology has been brought into the market in the past 18 months that soon we’ll see many organisations relaunching or iterating on technology that isn’t providing the required return on investment. Following some of these pre and post-launch processes will help to minimise future challenges.

If you have any questions regarding your tech and digital capabilities

Myth #1:
Once launched, technology will start looking after itself

Myth #3:
Today’s workforce is more tech enabled

Myth #4:
I’ll lose my talent acquisition employees to digital transformation

Myth #5
Operationalizing AI technology in my business will be straightforward

Back to intro

A perennial challenge faced by HR and Talent Acquisition (TA) leaders worldwide is that of recruitment budgeting and funding.

Funding for the hiring of talent may not be a critical issue for business, however the hiring of that talent certainly is.

Effective talent acquisition functions require a funding model that allows them to flex and scale in order to meet business needs.

In this paper AMS explores the various funding models available to businesses and shares its significant experience of the advantages and disadvantages of each.

View the story

Myth number 1:

Talent technology will replace the need for recruiters and sourcers

This is reflected in the wider working world. The World Economic Forum famously predicted that some 85 million jobs would be lost to automation by 2025, but with an additional 97 million created through new technology.

COVID-19 has only accelerated this digital transformation, with a 2020 McKinsey & Co report suggesting that a majority of companies had accelerated digitisation of internal operations and customer interactions by three to four years in the pandemic, while the share of digital products in their portfolio grew at a rate of a rapid seven years.

So with the impact of digitisation on the world of work and the growth in talent technology, are recruiters in danger of being replaced by robots?

In short, no. Recruitment is a deeply human process, rooted in the ability to connect, communicate and empathise with others. Think about how talent professionals source and screen applicants, understand and articulate an employer’s brand and then match the two together – and then try to imagine a non-human process doing so.

A 2020 report by cloud computing company Citrix called Work 2035 surveyed and interviewed nearly 2,000 business leaders about the future of work. It found that 73% of business leaders believe that technology and artificial intelligence will make employees at least twice as productive by 2035. However, when employees were asked the same question, just 39% agreed that technology and AI would make them more efficient. This digital disconnect represents the fear many employees have about the impact of digitisation on their jobs, versus the efficiencies that business leaders hope to gain.

With this in mind, it’s important to focus on the role technology has in reducing the pressure on talent professionals, rather than replacing them.

Human-centric recruitment

Josh Bersin is an author, industry expert and founder of corporate learning advisory The Josh Bersin Company. He believes that while the sheer volume of talent technology is accelerating, AI-based candidate searching and recruiting is still in its infancy.

“We’ve talked for years about the possibility of automating recruitment, but it is, at its core, a people-to-people business,” he writes in his paper the definitive guide to recruiting: human centred talent acquisition.

Instead, organisations should focus on ‘human-centred talent capabilities’, says Bersin. “[These are] more adaptable to change, more profitable, more innovative, their customers are more satisfied and they have higher employee engagement and retention. In short, when you have the right people, everything else gets better,” he adds.

Bersin’s research shows that companies leveraging human-centric talent acquisition are twice as likely to exceed financial targets, five times more likely to have a deep pipeline of talent and 30 times more likely to engage and retain employees.

At the same time, Bersin acknowledges that technology can strengthen talent pipelines – but the issue is that most companies don’t know how to effectively utilise digital recruiting solutions.

“Our research shows that virtual hiring tools, automation, talent intelligence platforms, and even AI and chatbots do drive key metrics like your ability to attract and hire great candidates or maintain a quality talent pipeline,” says Bersin.

According to Bersin’s report, organisations that use AI are four times more likely to boast a strong candidate pipeline, while those that use digital hiring solutions are twice as likely to attract and recruit the right talent.

So with that in mind, how can talent professionals work with technology to build the future of recruitment?

Combining people and process

The first step is to think of talent technology as a complement and partner to the human skills talent professionals bring. By using talent technology to bring in efficiencies and remove administrative tasks, recruiters and talent acquisition professionals can focus on more strategic goals.

This also creates efficiencies on the candidate side. In a candidate-driven market, it’s vital that employers offer a slick, speedy recruitment experience. Technology like chatbots, automatic interview scheduling and AI screening can speed up the hiring process and move potential candidates more quickly to the interview and offer stage.

Building people and process on top of technology

Digital transformation is affecting all aspects of business, so it’s vital that a business’ talent strategy works with the broader strategic goals of the company. This might mean harnessing technology used elsewhere in the business for talent acquisition, or using talent technology to find the right profile of candidates to drive transformation.

Either way, technology is going to underpin the future of work, so it’s vital to examine how organisations can build people and process on top of technology.

Building relationships with vendors to understand technology

The impact of technology on recruitment is in its infancy. Currently, most talent technology is aimed at improving workflow efficiencies. However, as the sector develops, new technologies will inevitably change how candidates apply for roles and how recruiters manage them. It’s also likely we will see a consolidation of technologies, with larger providers emerging offering wider services.

A long-term skillset organisations and talent professionals will need is the ability to build relationships with technology vendors in order to better understand their offerings, how these will integrate with an organisation and how they can maximise value.

So with the impact of digitisation on the world of work and the growth in talent technology, are recruiters in danger of being replaced by robots?

With this in mind, it’s important to focus on the role technology has in reducing the pressure on talent professionals, rather than replacing them.

Human-centric recruitment

At the same time, Bersin acknowledges that technology can strengthen talent pipelines – but the issue is that most companies don’t know how to effectively utilise digital recruiting solutions.

So with that in mind, how can talent professionals work with technology to build the future of recruitment?

Combining people and process

Building people and process on top of technology

Either way, technology is going to underpin the future of work, so it’s vital to examine how organisations can build people and process on top of technology.

Building relationships with vendors to understand technology

Expert commentary

Jonathan Kestenbaum
Managing Director
Technology Strategy & Partners, AMS

The future of technology in talent acquisition

There’s a number of ways to look at the impact of technology on people in talent acquisition. The easiest way is to look at how it’s impacted a similar industry, like sales. Here, the evolution of technology has seen sales development representatives, account executives and heads of sales increasingly use tools like Salesforce or Outreach. These people didn’t disappear when technology came in – they just became more efficient, optimised and data-driven.

The flipside of this is candidate experience. Applying for a new job is potentially a life-changing decision. If you get through to an interview, you’re looking for cultural fit, you’re looking to understand the vibe of an organisation.

You can’t get this without speaking to someone who works there and connecting with the human element of an organisation. This means that while technology can be an enabler of recruitment, the people element is and will remain crucial.

We’re only at the beginning of the impact of technology on recruitment processes, with workflow technology the main focus. There are many more layers and dynamics that will come into play as technology evolves. This means that technical savvy will be a unique skill for recruiters moving forward. The ability to understand technology and optimise recruitment processes around it will be a valuable skill going forward.

In the future, recruiters will actually use less technology than they do now. You’ll use five technology platforms, not 20. As the space evolves, we’ll see significant consolidation of technologies into larger platforms.

On the people side, technology is going to allow us to optimise for specific metrics that make a business impact, such as time to hire or diversity. Recruiters will build deeper, more meaningful relationships with candidates – and hold onto these relationships for a longer period of time. What’s going to differentiate organisations of the future is the relationships they hold with candidates. Technology will allow us to scalably stay in touch with candidates in a meaningful way, matching their skills and requirements to jobs.

Expert commentary

Jeanette Leeds
Managing Director
Hourly, AMS

How technology makes high volume hiring more efficient

AMS Hourly is set to focus on high volume retail organisations. It’s focused on engaging and optimising the hiring of hourly workers, through a quick and efficient process.

We do this through three key areas – conversational AI, automation and real-time data and analytics. Combining those three pieces can be very powerful in making the recruitment process more efficient and freeing up recruiters to do more strategic work.

One example of how such technology can improve recruitment is speed. The time from when a candidate engages with an Hourly chatbot to scheduling an interview is less than three minutes. This can be super powerful when you need to hire the same profile of candidate repeatedly in a short period of time. The chatbot asks a series of simple questions, the candidate answers and the system automates a response for you. It is rapid candidate sifting and scheduling.

Those in the market not using such technology are missing out on candidates, as the job market today is all about speed and candidate experience. Jobseekers today are used to a frictionless, consumer-like experience. They use Uber Eats to order food, or Amazon to buy products. Everything is so quick and easy and you don’t have to engage with another person. If your job application process is long and tedious, you’ll lose candidates to your competitors.

This is particularly true in the current job market, where demand for candidates is huge. There are way more jobs than candidates, so speed and efficiency is key.

There is a lot of fear about AI and automation in the job market, with people worried about technology replacing people. This will absolutely not happen. What will happen is that jobs will evolve. Technology will take over some tasks – particularly admin – but people will remain the decision-makers. Technology will guide and suggest, but people will make the ultimate decisions. It will make the job of a recruiter more strategic, more efficient and in the end, more fun.

If you have any questions regarding your tech and digital capabilities

Myth #2:
Once launched, technology will start looking after itself

Myth #3:
Today’s workforce is more tech enabled

Myth #4:
I’ll lose my talent acquisition employees to digital transformation

Myth #5
Operationalizing AI technology in my business will be straightforward

Back to intro

Talent technology is here to stay. The future is now.

View the story

Exploding Digital Myths in Talent Acquisition

AMS Whitepaper

Talent technology is here to stay.
The future is now.

We live in a world driven by technological transformation. New technologies have touched all industries and businesses. The talent landscape too has been propelled into the digital sphere, whether that’s automated CV sifting or conversational AI driven hiring processes.

George Westerman, the pioneering researcher and world recognized thought leader on digital transformation, recently commented: “When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar”.

As the war on talent continues to heat up, it’s that tech-enabled butterfly that will herald the endless summer for organizations looking to future proof their workforces by securing the best talent. Those who fail to embrace a technology enabled approach are increasingly at risk of finding themselves unable to deliver the workforce they need, thereby putting the business goals they strive for at considerable risk.

However, change is a symptom of the brave and the talent technology market is fragmented, often confusing and moving at pace. According to the Boston Consulting Group, more than $12bn in venture capital was poured into the sector in 2021 and thousands of new talent applications have come to market in the last five years. It’s no surprise that industry leaders have found it difficult to embrace and adopt new technologies and ways of working.

Our latest white paper, Exploding Digital Myths in Talent Acquisition, debunks some of the most common myths surrounding talent technology and explores how tech-enabled tools, when implemented and used correctly, can underpin a talent acquisition strategy, and deliver better, faster and more dynamic decisions.

It’s important, however, that we bridge the gap between technology and talent. The fear of being replaced by automation can be a very real concern for employees. A 2020 report by Citrix found that 73% of employers believed that AI and technology would make employees more efficient by 2035. Conversely, only 39% of employees agreed when asked the same question. If left unaddressed, these concerns can lead to poor adoption of costly technology, further slowing the hiring process and demotivating existing employees.

But that need not be the case. It’s a myth that employees and technology cannot co-exist, or that AI will soon automate the entire hiring process. Rather, technology is here to remove mundane administrative tasks from talent professionals, allowing them to focus on candidate experience and strategic insights.

That’s just one of the myths around talent technology that this white paper aims to address.

From how to choose and implement talent technology through to the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on wider business, we’ll explode some of the misconceptions around technology and give tangible advice on how to implement tech tools within your talent acquisition function.

Along the way, we’ll hear from AMS industry experts, academics and thought leaders about their take on how digitization is transforming the world of talent acquisition, as well as examining global reports and studies on the sector. We conclude with a spotlight on AMS solutions, carefully developed, to make a difference to the world of work.

The temperature of the Talent Climate is rising, and talent technology is here to stay. Forget the myths, augment your talent teams by successfully operationalizing the right technology and you’ll revolutionize your workforce.

Talent technology is here to stay.
The future is now.

David Leigh
Chief Executive Officer
AMS

That’s just one of the myths around talent technology that this white paper aims to address.

We live in a world driven by technological transformation. Pervasive new technologies have touched all industries and businesses.

Now, the talent landscape has been propelled into a digital sphere, whether that’s automated CV sifting or conversational AI driven hiring processes. While digitalisation has been welcomed with open arms, organizations that fail to embrace talent technology will be placed at a crosshair between their digitally nimble competitors.

Join us as we delve deep into some of the most common myths about talent technology – how tech-enabled tools, when utilised accurately and embedded properly, can uplift your talent acquisition strategy to allow for better, faster, and more dynamic hiring decisions.

Discover key insights from talent industry experts, thought leaders, and academics.

Join us as we uncover the truth behind 5 common talent technology myths:

Myth 1:
Talent technology will replace the need for recruiters and sources

Myth 2:
Once launched, technology can just look after itself

Myth 3:
Today’s workforce is more tech enabled

Myth 4:
I'll lose my TA employees to digital transformation

Myth 5:
Operationalizing AI technology in my organization will be straight forward

Conclusion

High volume hiring has always been complex.But today it’s more challenging than ever.

So, how can you power-up your hourly hiring strategy?

High volume hiring has always been complex.But today it’s more challenging than ever.

So, how can you power-up your hourly hiring strategy?

This guide explores:

Technology matters, but how you use it matters more

Admin burden

Process overload

The deal-breaker

Technology, used in the right way, can supercharge your volume recruitment strategy:

Streamline scheduling

Power your conversational AI capability

Switch on around-the-clock hiring

Unlock the power of mobile

Get metrics that matter

Key elements:

The impact:

Find out more about the global-first, technology-led search solution. Read our McDonald’s success story.

The impact:

Plug in the personal touch

You can strike the right balance by using the human element at key stages:

Put a face to the process

To meet or not to meet?

Follow up to scale up

Be the employer of choice

Key elements:

The impact:

Process creates the final strand for success

Work your workforce planning

Define the right persona

Get market insights that really matter

Make sure your sourcing strategy is sound

Assess and select, or streamline?

Deliver on DEI

Key elements:

Powering a successful high volume recruitment strategy

Scaling challenges

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Scaling challenges

Expert commentary

Gaining ROI for your AI investment

Expert commentary

Florenta Teodoridis

The future of artificial intelligence

If you have any questions regarding your tech and digital capabilities

What tasks are automated?

Image captions

Expert commentary

Joy KohHead of Growth and Advisory APAC, AMS

Technology is a talent acquisition enabler

Expert commentary

Francesca GinoAuthor and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Taking your people with you during change

If you have any questions regarding your tech and digital capabilities

Introduction

Image captions

Introduction

Lynne Gardner

David Ingleson

Changing mindset on transferable skills

Diversify the talent mix

Build an attractive career destination

Changing mindset on transferable skills

Not all renewable experts work in the sector

Not all jobs require formal training

What industries can we recruit from?

Actions for talent leaders

Image captions

Diversify the talent mix

Actions for talent leaders

Build an attractive career destination

Case Study: Multinational Energy Company

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Conclusion

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Tech talent in demand

Reskilling

Image captions

Expert commentary

How to beat the tech talent crunch

High volume hiring has always been complex.
But today it’s more challenging than ever.

High volume hiring has always been complex.
But today it’s more challenging than ever.

Joy Koh
Head of Growth and Advisory APAC, AMS

Francesca Gino
Author and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Case Study:
Multinational Energy Company

Josh Bersin
Author and HR thought leader

Annie Hammer
Head of Technology Advisory, Americas, AMS

Talent technology is here to stay.
The future is now.

Talent technology is here to stay.
The future is now.