According to Neil Kelly, CEO and Founder at Talent Sandbox, in today’s demanding times, when TA teams are expected to achieve more with limited resources, embracing a collaborative recruiter enablement strategy presents a remarkable opportunity to establish an efficient, agile, and future-focused function. With market complexities and recruitment dynamics evolving rapidly, it becomes imperative to nurture the collective skills and capabilities of our hiring teams. By doing so, they become the driving force behind the growth and success of our organisations.

What is recruiter enablement?

Recruiter enablement is the set of technology, tools, content, processes, and learning provided to your recruitment teams to help them do their job smarter, better, and quicker than before. It is an ongoing, iterative process that aims to empower recruiters by giving them the resources and knowledge they need to focus more time on the human element of recruitment.

Complex external market events

The unpredictability of external market events and the competition for talent have made recruiting a highly complex task. People and the external markets are incapable of being predicted. So, the secret to success is not to plan for these events, but to build organisations capable of prospering in any of the unforeseeable futures. For example, as a black swan event, the pandemic was unpredictable, but so was the platform economy’s disruption of traditional economies beforehand. In parallel, from a time when employees committed to one company and recruiters sprayed and prayed into the local talent market to replenish those who left on retirement, change has moved slowly then suddenly, all at once.

Recruiter enablement has its roots in sales transformation programmes

For recruiters, this complexity manifests itself today, in a variety of unpredictable ways:

Competition for talent: The competition for talent is fierce, and recruiters are struggling to attract and retain the best candidates. This challenge is compounded by the fact that the job market is increasingly candidate-driven for the best talent, with job seekers having more options and bargaining power.

Skills gap: With the rapid pace of technological change, many candidates don’t have the digital skills or experience needed for the jobs of the future. This makes it difficult for recruiters to find candidates with the right qualifications and experience in an increasingly digital world.

Changing candidate expectations: Candidates’ expectations are evolving, and recruiters have to adapt, to keep up. Applicants expect a fast-paced, two-way virtual recruitment process, and outdated methods send candidates elsewhere. As a result, recruiters have to embrace new technologies, methodologies, and processes to meet these ever-changing expectations.

Diversity, equity and inclusion: Diversity, equity and inclusion is increasingly important to the way we judge social justice and within candidate selection, recruiters now need to prioritise this in their hiring processes. This means businesses creating a more inclusive workplace culture and ensuring that job postings and recruitment processes are designed to attract a diverse pool of candidates.

Remote work: Remote work has become more prevalent in the wake of the pandemic for the knowledge economy, and recruiters have had to be alert to this new, and important job requirement.

Increase in the atypical workforce: 60% of talent hired is still employed permanently. However, this number has been decreasing for decades as those in the market increasingly seek a more fluid career through freelance, contract and other atypical relationships. This drives businesses to reimagine different talent propositions and alters the way we organise our workforce.

Evolution of recruitment  

Recruitment has evolved from an analogue process to a digital one, such as the introduction of technology such as Applicant Tracking Systems. However, simply automating processes is no longer enough. Recruitment has experienced a series of influences, from across the business spectrum, to help us do things better. From infusing marketing techniques into our candidate outreach and nurturing; to interrogating data and insight to drive more scientific decision-making and now, increasingly, the influence of business enablement, to help us tackle the problem of repeatable, consistent, standardised and continuously improving, execution.

 Benefits of recruiter enablement

Recruiter enablement has its roots in sales transformation programmes. Here, sales teams were equipped with the right tools, resources, and information needed to effectively engage with potential buyers throughout the sales process. It empowered sales representatives to close more deals, increase revenue, and drive business growth. And it did so by aligning marketing, sales, and other relevant departments to work collaboratively towards achieving common business goals. This allowed for consistency, cut back on rework, and gave the team the basis to learn off each other and create an interdependent system and culture.

The challenge now is to take the concept of enablement, at scale, into the recruitment space. Recruiter enablement effectively helps put a structure and an operating system around these developing capabilities, embedding excellence as standard.

What can we expect in return?

• We move recruitment teams from an unproductive base of independent operators, into a team that collaborates, co-operates, and communicates around agreed standards of excellence
• We constantly outsource the mundane, the repeatable and other such activities to the machine, but this time, at scale
• We avoid costly time for rework when we draw down on our collective effort in sharing and collaborating on intelligence, assets, and other recruitment collateral
• We instil velocity, efficiency, value for money and more science into the art of recruiting
• We then use the time made available from outsourcing the mundane and repeatable, to dial up the human interaction with our talent prospects, because it’s both the differentiator in the recruitment process and it’s what we enjoy doing.
• Through constant feedback, iteration, and continuous improvement, the TA function moves up the value chain within the business, as it matures in approach and sophistication.

Embracing recruiter enablement

Embracing recruiter enablement is not only the right thing to do; it is also a smart move for both talent acquisition and the overall business. Teams that prioritise learning and enablement are more likely to attract top talent, increase productivity, and achieve higher job satisfaction.

By embracing recruiter enablement, you can enhance your recruiting capability, improve performance, and set the foundation for establishing an enablement culture within your team.

To find out more about getting started with recruiter enablement in your TA function, visit: https://www.talentsandbox.com/recruiter-enablement/