Talent Acquisition in 2021

Operating as a provider in Executive HR Recruitment and Interim Management, like many at the start of the year I’ve been reflecting on 2020 and looking at any lessons learnt.

When I look back to 2020, one of the most frequently discussed topics with active candidates was around candidate experience.

With the increase of ‘active’ talent in the job market, alongside a potential desire to reduce costs. We saw more organisations looking at direct hiring through sites such as LinkedIn to recruit roles, often up to CPO level.

If we look at candidate experience as a sequence of interactions with a business, we know that even small gestures can go a long way – especially during a global pandemic. In fact, the way that companies respond during these times could define their brand for decades. 

Yet at the same time, a company’s reputation isn’t just defined by what they’re doing – it can also be defined by what they are not doing.

I spoke with many active candidates last year, whose experiences of applying to opportunities didn’t tend to align with what they saw from projected by the consumer brand. Some experiencing little response to their direct applications from potential employers at all!

If I generalise, it seems that became ‘the norm’ in many situations and to an extent it became accepted. Internal TA teams were being overwhelmed by hundreds of applicants (I think the most I saw was 700) and many of these teams also had members furloughed.

But now in 2021 with the future of work having potentially been changed many years ahead of our expectations. Alongside the talent pool having also been broadened as a result of some additional flexibility in location. It seems that many feel that the hiring process will come under greater scrutiny than ever before.

With the 4th industrial revolution being spoken about in many blogs that I’ve seen and Technology’s previous creep into the workspace suddenly becoming a sprint. The workplace has been advanced years ahead of our expectations – and during this time, candidates expectations have now changed aswell.

Having seen more of my active candidate network starting to obtain positions in both leadership HR and Talent acquisition positions. I know many will take their own personal job searching experiences from 2020 into their next role.

We are all now working in a way that is very different to when we were projected into this working world in quarter 1 last year and should have learnt along the way.

With an increase in the number of leadership Talent Acquisition positions we are starting to see, I would hope that the candidate experience that was accepted in 2020 will no longer be the norm in 2021….