Solution: Technology

Talking Talent: Using Predictive Analytics to Hire Best Talent Faster

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In this episode of Talking Talent, we’re talking about how you can use predictive analytics to make your recruiting funnel more efficient and hire top talent, faster.


Our guest is Allison Brigden, Global Leader of Innovation and Support at PeopleScout. Allison has been with the company for more than 20 years, and in that time, she has gained a wealth of knowledge through implementing and managing complex RPO engagements. In her current role, Allison oversees PeopleScout’s AffinixTM technology. Affinix is a mobile-first, cloud-based platform that creates a consumer-like candidate experience and streamlines the sourcing process. Allison has been instrumental throughout the development and rollout of Affinix.


In this tightening talent market with unemployment rates at record lows, predictive analytics is emerging as an essential AI tool for employers looking to stay ahead of the competition. Predictive analytics allows employers to use the power of data to make predictions about candidates and drive efficiencies throughout the entire talent acquisition process.


Predictive analytics is a type of data analytics that uses data to find patterns and then uses those models to attempt to predict the future. Predictive analytics can’t tell you what will happen, but it shows what is likely to happen based on past trends. It’s as close as employers can get to predicting the future.


The ability to make these predictions helps shorten the entire recruiting process while making stronger hires. In a competitive talent market, this allows employers to identify the top talent for a particular role and make an offer to the best candidates faster than the competition. For employers, this results in improvements in time-to-hire and quality-of-hire, and for candidates, it builds a better experience, leaving a positive impression that will factor into their decision to accept an offer.


In this podcast episode, Allison covers how predictive analytics can be used during the sourcing process, how it can be used throughout the recruitment funnel and what employers should consider when implementing a predictive analytics tool.

The Value of Globalising Your Recruitment Strategy

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As competition for talent increases, it is increasingly important for international organisations to build recruitment strategies that are consistent across the globe. One factor driving this shift is falling unemployment around the world. The U.S., China, Japan, Britain and Canada all have unemployment rates at or below 6 percent – with the U.S., China and Japan at or below 4 percent. This makes it difficult to find and attract top talent in these economies.

Leaders are concerned about the growing competition for talent. According to PwC’s 21st CEO Survey, which collects data from leaders around the world, 80 percent of CEOs say they’re worried about finding talent with necessary skills. Additionally, 54 percent say they plan to increase the headcount at their organisation over the next year and 57 percent believe global growth will improve over the next year.

To support growth and remain competitive in sourcing and recruiting the best workers, organisations need to build a comprehensive global recruitment strategy. An overarching global recruitment strategy covers recruitment marketing and employer branding, candidate experience and onboarding around the world.

In this blog post, we will cover the benefits of a global recruitment strategy and the building blocks employers need to be successful.

Benefits of a Global Recruitment Strategy

Improved quality of hire

An effective global sourcing strategy enables employers to make a better cultural match and increases the potential of finding the right candidate with the right skills.

Increased diversity and greater cultural literacy

Employers are able to speak to and attract candidates regardless of country through a consistent global recruitment strategy. If the recruitment process is optimised for one country or weaker in different parts of the world, an employer will see the overrepresentation of some candidates and underrepresentation of others. By deploying a truly global process, employers will be able to attract and hire a more diverse slate of candidates. Increased diversity has a host of benefits including improved productivity and higher levels of employee engagement. Diverse employees also bring an increase in cultural literacy to an organisation.

Better ability to source candidates with skills of the future

A global recruitment strategy can help employers source candidates with the skills of the future. Automation is changing the way we work, and different areas of the globe are adapting at different paces. According to PwC, 94 percent of CEOs in China are worried about finding candidates with the right skills compared to just 51 percent in Canada. With a global recruitment strategy, HR professionals can adapt candidate personas from around the world to ensure they are sourcing talent with the necessary skills and identifying new ways to target candidates who fit these personas.

Components of a Global Recruitment Strategy

Employment brand

The first step of implementing a global recruitment strategy is building an employment brand that is truly global. Many employers, especially those in the B2B space, don’t have a strong consumer brand. Without a strong consumer brand, most organisations need to rely on their employer brand to attract talent. There are many ways for an organisation to build its employer brand, including developing employee ambassadors, using social media and digitising brand strategy while putting mobile first.

When implementing a global recruitment strategy, organisations need to build an employer brand that is effective across the world. It is important to work with local employees to ensure employer branding and recruitment marketing campaigns are culturally appropriate in each region in which an employer recruits.

To accomplish this effectively, HR should work with marketing, so the strategy is aligned with and deployed alongside traditional marketing messages.

Candidate experience

A strong end-to-end candidate experience is important regardless of where candidates are from. Candidates around the world want mobile-friendly applications that are fast and easy to fill out, well-written job descriptions that engage candidates and convince them to apply, positive interview experiences and consistent communication.

Employee referral programme

The process should also include a strong employee referral programme for each country as employee referrals account for nearly a third of all hires, according to SHRM. It is important to ensure an equivalent referral bonus in each country. The amount should be based on a percentage of the average income in each location. If referral bonuses are too varied in different countries, it can make employees in one location feel less valued.

Consistent onboarding process

The onboarding process should also be as consistent as possible in each location. According to SHRM, 69 percent of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experience great onboarding. While some countries have exceptions, like requiring a new hire to come into the office for a signature before the start date, but otherwise the process should be as consistent as possible. At PeopleScout, we standardise, document and create global job contract repositories to make our clients’ onboarding processes more efficient and compliant.

Standardised technology

When building a global recruitment strategy, it is important to standardise technology as much as possible across the globe. While there are exceptions, like Russia where, by law, you need to have an ATS on the ground in the country, you should use the same technology systems wherever possible.
A centralised technology system for all global locations gives you better data and a better view of your entire workforce. This gives you the ability to better spot trends and make strategic decisions.

Global labour market data analysis

If the talent market starts to tighten in one part of the world, you can easily see how your workforce compares throughout the region and other areas of the world. That insight can be used to make high-level business decisions. For example, a PeopleScout client was looking to hire Norwegian speakers in a central European country. After analysing the market data, PeopleScout provided recommendations for better locations outside of Norway where the client could find more candidates who met their requirements.

Finding a Global RPO Partner

A global RPO provider can be a valuable partner in developing a global recruitment strategy because you benefit from the wealth of knowledge and experience they gain through working in different industries around the world. As you look for a partner, it’s important to ensure that they have experience in the parts of the world where you’re looking to hire candidates.

Your partner should help you navigate the compliance and cultural issues that accompany any global sourcing programme. While some local labour laws deal with issues that happen after the hiring process, remember that they can have implications during the hiring process too. An RPO provider can help prepare you for many of the challenges before you post a job or extend an offer. Additionally, a partner with years of experience can help you anticipate any communication and training issues so that you can tackle the issues head-on.

If you are considering building a global recruitment strategy, read more about our global RPO solutions.

How to Leverage Workforce Analytics and HR Data in Workforce Planning

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According to a survey conducted by Harvard Business Review, 15 percent of respondents said they use “predictive analytics based on HR data and data from other sources within or outside the organisation,” while 48 percent predicted they would be doing so in two years.

While organisations are increasingly incorporating data into the HR mix, there are still areas for improvement and to further adopt workforce analytics. Below, we outline some of the best practices for building an analytics-oriented workforce planning programme along with some of the analytics processes essential for success.

Building an Analytics-Oriented HR Data Team

Organisations need to solicit input from a variety of stakeholders like talent acquisition programme managers, human resource leaders, data specialists, budget and finance leaders and IT specialists to create a multidisciplinary team. When building your team, considering the following:

  • Does your organisation have an individual with experience and expertise in data analysis with the leadership skills to manage a workforce analytics team?
  • Does the team you have assembled include analysts with data management, statistics and data visualisation skills?
  • Do you have your IT department’s support to choose the right tools to integrate HR data with other data sources in the organisation?
  • Can your team confidently present data-oriented solutions to senior leadership even if the solutions are counter to past workforce plans?

Collecting the Right Data

Collecting essential data points is a key step in a data-driven HR programme. The data needed for analysis may come from multiple divisions within an organisation. Organisations need to communicate the importance of sharing data with leaders organisation-wide. Evaluating current internal HR data can help organisations identify future needs and draft a workforce strategy around them. Below is a list of data needed for workforce analytics.

Internal HR data:

  • What are the demographics of the current workforce? (Gender, ethnicity, disabilities, full/part-time, etc.)
  • How many people work in each position?
  • Where are positions located?
  • What is the employee to supervisor ratio?
  • What are the pay rates of current employees?
  • What is the likelihood of attrition through retirement?
  • What recruitment activities have been completed in the last two to three years?
  • What recruitment activities and resources were used?
  • How many qualified applicants were found?
  • Where did the most qualified applicants come from?
  • What do new employees think of your recruitment practices?
  • How many employees are needed to fill each position?
  • What knowledge, skills, competencies and abilities are needed to perform anticipated job functions?
  • What processes could be done more efficiently or effectively?
  • What are the organisation’s strategic objectives?
  • What are the organisation’s diversity objectives?

External Data Sources

Many organisations have inward-focused approach to workforce analytics and HR data and do not take into account what is going on outside the organisation. The labour market is rapidly changing. Labour market data can inform organisations about talent supply in different locations and provide critical market intelligence on issues like competitiveness and salary range.

Data and job projection reports from the U.S. Department of Labour’s Bureau of Labour Statistics, for example, can lead to a better understanding of the supply and demand for essential occupations and the competitiveness of the job market.

Putting HR Data in Action  

Organisations should take the insights gained through workforce analytics initiatives and develop a workforce plan to fill the gaps between current and future hiring needs. Some strategies and considerations when drafting a data-oriented workforce plan include:

  • Plan for employees to receive skills training when needed to prepare for changing roles within the company.
  • Hire and retain employees with skills that are critical to the success of the business.
  • Create programmes focused on employee retention.
  • Increase efficiencies in recruitment and hiring processes by proactively identifying vacancies through succession planning and forecasting future business requirements.
  • Identify training needs, classification and compensation issues, organisational or position changes that may affect employee retention.
  • Create workplace diversity strategies to reach organisational diversity goals.

Managing a Workforce Analytics Programme and HR Data

Workforce analytics is a continuous process that is highly susceptible to changes in the economy and labour market. To stay on top of new developments, organisations need to ensure their workforce analytics process is managed properly. Below, we share advice on how to best manage a workforce analytics programme.

Prioritise Business Goals

For workforce analytics to drive real value, it has to be aligned with an organisation’s business goals. Everyone contributing to workforce analytics process needs to be briefed on the overarching business strategies, so they can understand how their analysis contributes.

Common workforce goals include:

  • Reduce turnover on a particular team or organisation-wide
  • Retain high-performing individuals
  • Improve staffing and recruiting efficiency
  • Lower the cost of operations
  • Ensure the organisation has talent aligned to expansion plans or planned new product offerings

Stakeholder Management

Because workforce analytics involve stakeholders from HR, finance, IT and others within an organisation, clear and open communication should be emphasised early in the process. This will help stakeholders and their teams understand expectations up front and establish relationships between teams for success.

Data Quality

At the start of a workforce analytics initiative, it makes sense for organisations to conduct basic data hygiene practices like assessing the quality of data, gauging the need for data clean-up and documenting data-gathering and reporting processes.

Data Governance

Because employee data is personal, privacy rules must be respected. Proper data governance should be the responsibility of everyone involved in workforce analytics. However, someone should be assigned ownership to ensure that data and HR teams are following the processes established for data security.

Flexibility

Economic and business climates are not static; even the best workforce analytics programme may miss emerging talent shortages or inadequately take certain contingencies into account. To make sure workforce analytics programme reflect the latest internal and external developments, organisations should regularly re-calibrate and revise assumptions made from previous HR data analysis.

RPO Providers Can Assist Organisations with Workforce Planning, HR Data and Analytics

There is no one-size-fits-all workforce planning programme, even for global organisations that have similar needs. What’s right for one organisation may not be what another organisation needs.

However, workforce planning does not have to be mysterious or complex. Organisations more than likely have a lot of the data they need, it is just a matter of creating the right management and reporting practices to interpret the data in meaningful ways.

The right RPO partner can help organisations make sense of their workforce analytics with their experience and deep understanding of labour market data and trends. An RPO partner can also work with an organisation to create methodologies adapted to suit their needs. Click here to learn more about PeopleScout’s RPO solutions.

Virtual Reality: Enhancing the Candidate Experience

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While virtual reality (VR) is not new, it is gaining popularity in talent acquisition as a powerful tool for elevating the candidate experience. If used correctly, VR can help companies win talent by standing out from the content companies send to candidates. VR is also a strong tool to promote an employer’s brand.

VR allows users to experience their surroundings in an imaginary immersive environment. From flying on a broomstick at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios to entering a haunted house simulation, virtual reality is a first-person, other-world experience. In recruiting, virtual reality gives candidates a look into real-world activities, virtually experiencing a day-in-the-life of a potential job while helping employers promote their brands in an uninterrupted way.

VR is usually a blanket term for any immersive virtual experience. However, other concepts related to VR add to the landscape of tools in production or now available. These technologies include 360-degree videos (e.g., home tours), computer-generated VR, augmented reality (e.g., wearing Google glass) and the further-out-there mixed reality technology (e.g., the real world and virtual world interact with one another). Mobile AR is also emerging; think the popularity of Pokemon Go. Mobile AR is predicted to one day potentially drive the majority of the growth of VR/AR. However, the 2014 VR market revenue was $62.1B and is expected to balloon to $310B by 2025.

Virtual Reality Applications in Talent Acquisition

VR is used in many different formats in talent acquisition. Career fairs are a popular example. Candidates use VR headsets to experience a first-hand look at what a day-in-the-life might look like before they pursue a position. The British Army used this tactic successfully, allowing candidates to virtually ride tanks in a simulated drill; as a result, the British Army saw its recruitment applications rise by 66 percent. Similarly, the U.S. Navy is also experimenting with virtual reality at career forums, where recruits can immerse themselves in virtual reality combat situations by acting as Navy Seals.

Deutsche Bahn also demonstrates different job roles using VR. Various simulation videos show candidates what it would be like to be a construction worker, a train conductor or work in various other roles. Deutsche Bahn reports that having candidates experience VR has increased the focus and volume of candidates applying.

Some VR applications have merged with gamification techniques. One example of this has been successfully measured by Jaguar. Jaguar developed a skills-based mixed-reality game to attract electronic and software engineers. Available as a mobile app, users engage willingly in a skills test when in-game. Those with interest in Jaguar and who exhibit high aptitude on these tests are green-lighted through the recruitment process.

When new workers join an organisation, onboarding and training play a critical role in helping them assimilate faster and reduce turnover. Being trained in a more immersive environment using VR increases learning retention in a more present, focused state. It can also be fun. Kentucky Fried Chicken recently rolled out a programme where new cooks are taught the Colonel’s famous Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe through a VR game.

Using Virtual Reality to Attract Candidates

Candidates have a blind spot when they apply to companies they do not know professionally. Part of the true picture of how an organisation operates remains unknown, even after reading employer branding materials, social media posts and company-review websites like Glassdoor or Yelp!.

VR helps candidates feel more confident about accepting a role because they know more about how an employer operates. With VR, there is a deeper level of personalisation and engagement that gives candidates a real-world look into their potential employer’s world. Similar to video, but in a more immersive way, VR creates an emotional connection.

Candidates who do not feel attached to a company’s mission, vision or brand also have the opportunity of self-selecting out of the process. If a candidate makes that decision, then possible costs associated with an in-person interview can be avoided.

One item to keep in mind when attracting candidates is that younger audiences are more closely drawn to VR than older audiences. Younger candidates are potentially more familiar with modern technologies than their older peers. If a company is looking to attract an older workforce, VR may not be the right path. Or, it should be supplemented with other tools, so more senior candidates are not discouraged from applying.

Getting Started with Virtual Reality

Today, most examples of talent acquisition applications of VR are organisations with the scale to run enterprise-wide programmes or those with an RPO partner experienced in deploying new technology.

If you’re thinking about adding virtual reality efforts to your recruiting programme, we recommend taking the following steps before getting started.

  • Confirm your existing talent acquisition programme is complete. Are your processes and candidate flow aligned? Do you have the right ecosystem in place for your entire talent acquisition process? Adding VR will help you measure if it differentiates your organisation to new candidates. An optimised programme will be flexible, allowing you to add VR where it is needed.
  • Understand your target audience. The content you design needs to target a particular audience. You should already have persona-specific content related to your candidate journey. This targeting needs to come to life with VR too.
  • Use VR in conjunction with other tools in the technology ecosystem. VR is a great way to promote your employer brand and attract candidates. Once interested, candidates still need to be assessed before moving on in the process. Consider doing this through on-line assessments, video interviewing or a combination of related strategies.
  • Monitor the talent acquisition technology ecosystem market. VR is mature in the consumer world, but still in its infancy in the B2B world. As VR matures in talent acquisition, monitor similar and complementary technologies that may also be used in the future, such as augmented reality or mobile applications.

Virtual reality should be geared to the right audience as part of an overall recruitment programme. Organisations should consider VR and track the growth of associated technologies to stay ahead of the competition.

How to Create and Provide a Positive Candidate Experience

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The world of hiring is more candidate-driven than ever before. Professionals in various industries at different levels of experience are in high demand, and that means they have more options when it comes to choosing an employer. The presence of options, coupled with the rising bargaining power of employees, has lifted candidate experience to the top of many organisation’s list of talent acquisition and workforce management priorities.

Generally, the better the candidate experience, the more likely an organisation is to attract the best talent. Top candidates demand compelling experiences during and after the hiring process. In this post, we outline ways organisations can improve their candidate experience to gain an advantage over the competition.

Why is Candidate Experience Important?

The candidate experience covers the entire recruitment process from before an application is submitted to onboarding, and everything in between. Poor experiences during the recruiting process can negatively impact an employer’s ability to hire talent. In fact, 27 percent of candidates who have a bad experience would “actively discourage others to apply.” What’s more, 77 percent of candidates are likely to share positive experiences with those in their network.

Today, candidates have more choices, making it harder for employers to differentiate themselves and establish how their values, company culture and employees represent a unique opportunity for top candidates. Through a positive candidate experience, organisations can gain the trust and loyalty of applicants who may become advocates for an organisation and help bolster their employer brand. With a stronger employer brand, organisations can distinguish themselves as an employer of choice in their industry.

Research Report

Inside the Candidate Experience

Read the report

Candidate Experience Touchpoints

Every interaction with an organisation, from job postings and career sites to speaking with a recruiter or hiring manager can positively or negatively impact the candidate’s perception of an organisation. Candidates often decide whether or not to accept a job offer based on how they were treated throughout the hiring process.

Each touchpoint throughout the hiring process—from attraction and sourcing to onboarding—should be taken into consideration when optimising your candidate experience. The following are tips on how to enhance your candidate experience.

Employer Branding

In today’s digital-obsessed world, most candidates use the internet to research an potential employer prior to applying for a job. Having a strong employer brand not only helps build a connection with a prospective hire, but it introduces them to who you are, what you do and why you are a great place to work.

There are many ways in which a company can work to optimise its employer brand. For example, organisations can ask current employees to leave reviews on Glassdoor or submit a quote about their experience to be used in recruiting materials. Social media savvy employees can also be encouraged to share company culture through news, photos and events.

Employer branding messages should be communicated across all platforms that are relevant to the organisation’s business and recruitment efforts such as job boards, social media platforms and industry publications.

Make a Good First Impression

According to a CareerBuilder study, 57 percent of candidates conduct their preliminary research by visiting an organisation’s website, making it clear that career pages and candidate-facing web pages need to be designed to capture an applicant’s interest.

An effective career site should make visitors feel welcome and give applicants the information they are looking for, such as details about employment opportunities, company culture and work environment.

Career sites should be both engaging and easy to understand. An excellent online experience can motivate candidates to apply and differentiate employers from competitors.

Respond to Candidates

CareerBuilder also reports that 47 percent of candidates never receive any form of communication from the organisation they apply to, even past 60 days after applying. This leaves a huge opportunity for organisations to provide superior communication and recruitment marketing.

Every candidate deserves a response, even if they will not be given an interview. Whether the response is an automated email, a letter or a phone call, as long as it is prompt and tactful, applicants will not feel that they wasted their time.

Organisations who treat every candidate equally are more likely to have applicants reapply to the company or encourage family, friends and coworkers to apply.

Create Unique Experiences

An optimised application process should be tailored based on different criteria such as the role, location or technical experience required. For example, certain positions may require rigorous technical screening questions, while others might rely more on personality or cultural fit. Organisations can even display specific job postings in an applicant’s preferred language to make them feel more comfortable with the hiring process.

Employers can also build a way for applicants to showcase their personal interests and non-work-related activities throughout the application process. This allows candidates to display their personality in addition to just experience; organisations can also use this opportunity to learn about additional skills that may make a hire more desirable.

Improving the Application Process

Many qualified candidates are lost because organisations lack a streamlined and easy application process.

To improve the application process, organisations should ask the following questions:

  • What does the application process look like? Is it long? Is it tedious?
  • What happens after a candidate completes the application?
  • How will they know if they have been selected to move on through the hiring process?

Below, we outline some additional ways to improve the candidate experience through improving the application process.

Mobile-Friendly Applications

Job seekers today spend time on their smartphone doing everything from buying birthday gifts to scheduling doctor appointments. In fact, according to Pew Research Centre, 53 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds and 43 percent of all users have used a smartphone as part of a job search. Yet, many employers still offer an outdated or poorly designed mobile application experience.

Because so many candidates learn about job opportunities on their mobile devices, organisations need to create a mobile-friendly application experience. Candidates—in particular, high-demand candidates such as those working in technology and executives—may judge an organisation by its technology and application processes. Being perceived as “outdated” could damage an organisation’s employer brand.

At PeopleScout, we understand the importance of creating an optimised application experience across all devices, which is why we built Affinix to be mobile-first. Learn more about PeopleScout’s mobile-friendly recruiting solutions with AffinixTM.

Job Descriptions

A well-written job description can engage a candidate and convince them to apply for a position. However, there is a disconnect when it comes to job descriptions, with 72 percent of hiring managers stating that they provide clear job descriptions, while only 36 percent of applicants agree.

Organisations should perform a quality check on their job descriptions and ask the question, “Could these descriptions describe any company?” If they can, the descriptions probably rely on a list of generic skills and traits, which may deter top candidates from applying while inviting unqualified ones.

Instead, organisations should write job descriptions that highlight what a candidate would be expected to achieve during their first month, three months, six months and a year into the job. The improved clarity will provide candidates with a clear understanding of what they can expect if they are hired.

Shorten Applications

The length of a job application can have a major impact on candidate experience. A study conducted by Indeed found that 88.7 percent of potential applicants abandon the application process if there are 45 or more screener questions. What’s more,  43 percent of candidates spent more than 30 minutes completing an application, and 12 percent spent more than one hour.

A “Quick Apply” feature that only collects the most pertinent information required to move a candidate forward in the process can help shorten job applications. Many ATSs have features that allow applicants to import their resume from other sites such as LinkedIn or auto-fill parts of the application to save time. By shortening the application time, organisations will have more candidates completing the process, adding to the applicant pool and increasing the chances of finding the right hire.

Provide a Positive Interview Experience

A positive interview experience can present a positive image of a company, improving the odds of the best candidate accepting a job offer.

During the interview, one of the most effective ways to get good responses is by using behavioural interviewing techniques. Behavioural interviewing is the concept that past experience is a good indicator of future performance. Questions that begin with “Tell me about a time,” or “Describe a moment when,” are usually behavioural in nature. It allows the candidate to share an experience from their past.

Ultimately, a well-defined interview process will give everyone the comfort to ask and receive the best answers.

How RPO Providers can Help with Candidate Experience

From the initial recruiting email or phone call to onboarding, high-quality talent expects a high-quality candidate experience. An RPO provider who makes smart use of technology and recruiting strategies can help deliver high-quality experiences that make candidates feel important. An RPO partner’s recruiting teams spend hours cultivating relationships with candidates. The rapport they build with candidates helps establish relationships that over time lead to making quality hires and recruiting success.

Organisations who partner with PeopleScout can build a world-class, global candidate experience that features personalised messaging, social recruitment, retargeting and programmatic prospecting as well as data-driven decision making.

Learn more about how you can boost your candidate experience with our research report, Inside the Candidate Experience.

Strategies for Building an Effective Talent Community

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Competition for talent is increasing across the globe, and employers are looking for innovative strategies to stay ahead of the competition. To gain a competitive advantage, employers are deploying a variety of methods. Wages are on the rise after years of slow growth. New graduates face strong prospects for employment. Even retirement is starting to look different for older workers with important skills. Finding new ways to source and attract workers with the skills of the future is a growing need.

In the U.S., years of job growth have led to the lowest unemployment rate in decades. Around the world, favorable job conditions are making it more difficult for employers to hire the talent they need. Adding to the challenge, employers are facing a skills shortage as they look to hire candidates who have the training, education and experience to bring their workforce into the future. This pressure is even greater in industries that are currently adapting to disruptive technology, like the auto industry. While reskilling and future degree programs can help increase the size of the talent pipeline in the future, employers still need to find and hire talent today. Building a talent community is a promising solution.

What is a Talent Community?

A talent community is a sourcing strategy that is an ongoing, multifaceted approach to candidate engagement that creates employment brand ambassadors and a talent pool that begins to feed itself. A talent community is a process rather than an event and takes continual effort to maintain.

Traditional sourcing starts with a job opening. From there, a job description is written and disseminated. A sourcing specialist may search their contacts and social media to find a candidate with skills that match, but the process largely involves posting a job and waiting for the right candidate to find you.

In a talent community, the process is cyclical. It starts before a job requisition is created, and it doesn’t stop when a candidate is hired. Employers consistently build profiles of the types of candidates they would like for roles they may need to fill in the future. Then, employers need to build pipelines through technology, partnerships and employer branding initiatives to connect with those people, whether the employer currently has a job opening for that candidate or not. Finally, when a candidate gets to the point of applying, the experience throughout that process needs to be so strong that even candidates who do not make it through the process will become ambassadors for that brand and continue to apply for open positions in the future.

Building a talent community sourcing strategy has a host of benefits for employers. A talent community is sustainable. It can feed itself. This means decreased time-to-fill and cost-of-vacancy because candidates who are interested in working for an organisation are waiting for a job to be posted rather than a recruiter posting a job and waiting for the right candidate to apply. It also leads to increased quality of hire because the employer has already determined the ideal candidate persona and has built a pipeline to find those people. When more qualified candidates are in that pipeline, the likelihood of making a strong hire goes up.

Why Talent Communities Alone Aren’t Enough

  • They have to be combined with great employer branding.
  • Your content has to be engaging and of value to the audience.
  • You have to have the right mix of viable candidates with the skills and experience that your company values, and ambassadors for your employer brand.
  • It is what you put into it, not what you take out–you have to cultivate the community or it will stagnate.

Using Employer Branding to Build a Talent Community

As employers work to create a talent community they need to build an employer brand that stands out from other organisations they compete with for talent. Organisations with a strong employer brand can stand out in a crowded landscape and draw in more candidates. There are several strategies employers can use to build their brands.

Online Talent Communities

An online talent community is a way to continue to communicate with candidates who may be interested in working for you in the future but can’t find a job opening that meets their skills and needs right now. It is also a way to engage with candidates who apply to jobs they aren’t qualified for yet but still have potential. An online talent community allows candidates to provide their contact information, resume and job interests. Then, the organisation can search those resumes when a position opens, and it can send matching job openings to the candidate. This keeps the employer at the front of a candidate’s mind and provides recruiters with a slate of candidates every time a requisition opens.

Recruitment Email Marketing

Many organisations use email marketing as a part of their traditional marketing strategy, but it is also important in employment branding. Email marketing can be used in partnership with an online talent community. Organisations can send recruitment marketing emails to share job openings, as well as information about their culture. One caveat to using email marketing as a part of an employer branding strategy is that the emails should be as personalised as possible. A candidate who has provided their resume should only receive job openings that correspond with their skillsets. Data about candidates can also be used to personalise how often candidate receive emails or at what time of the day they are sent. Regulations like CAN-SPAM in the U.S. and GDPR in the EU regulate email marketing, and we discuss those later in this post.

Social Media

Every organisation should have a strategy for sharing its employment brand on social media, though that strategy may look different for different companies. One option is to create a separate “careers” social media page where the organisation can post job openings and information about the workplace, culture and current employees. At PeopleScout, we recommend this strategy to our clients and work with them to optimise their existing pages to showcase their employer brand. This strategy works well for employers with a strong brand presence and large volume of hires. Another option, especially for smaller organisations, is to include some employer branding on their traditional social media accounts. In this approach, employer branding related posts that share information about the workplace and culture should be interspersed between standard social media posts.

Video

Many employers are familiar with video interviewing, but video can enhance employer branding in several additional ways and doesn’t always need high production quality. One example is video job descriptions. A job posting could include a short video of a hiring manager talking about the job and what they are looking for. A video like this gives a candidate a better understanding of the job and gives them a glimpse into the culture of the organisation. Additionally, organisations can use video to show workplace tours, so job seekers get an idea of what working for an organisation might look like. If an organisation is hiring for a lot of entry-level roles but frequently promotes within the company, a video that shows an employee’s career path from entry-level to a leadership role can also motivate candidates to apply for hard-to-fill entry-level jobs.

Chatting and Text

Another method of building a strong employer brand is communicating with candidates in the ways candidates want to communicate. Chat and text are growing in popularity. Some employers are deploying chatbots throughout their recruitment process. For others, a chat window with limited hours but access to a live recruiter can be successful. While many employers may be cautious to start a system to text messages candidates, several PeopleScout clients have found success and higher rates of candidate engagement.

Using Innovative Technology to Power a Talent Community

While a compelling employer brand is important for attracting strong candidates, it’s not enough to stay ahead in the current competitive landscape. Innovative technology solutions can help employers source top talent faster than the competition.

Geofencing

Geofencing can be used in a few different ways during the sourcing process. Much like targeted ads for restaurants or stores can be delivered to a person’s cell phone or computer based on where that person is located, job ads can be targeted to candidates in a specific geographical area as well. This can be valuable to employers that have a variety of locations spread across a large geographical area. Geofencing can be used to target job ads at candidates near specific branches. It can also be used for industry events or expos where a large number of potential candidates could be in one location at the same time.

AI Sourcing

Artificial intelligence sourcing can provide recruiters with a solid slate of candidates as soon as a requisition is opened, giving the recruiter a strong head start to fill the role. An AI sourcing solution that uses predictive analytics modeling can also provide the recruiter with information about how well the candidate matches the job opening and how likely the candidate is to leave their current role. With this information, recruiters are able to work more quickly and efficiently, filling the role with the best talent in less time. In the end, it saves companies time and money. At PeopleScout, AI sourcing is built into AffinixTM, PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology solution.

AI Data Tracking

AI data tracking can be used to make other sourcing and employer branding strategies more effective. Artificial intelligence and predictive analytics can understand and predict candidate behaviors. By tracking what time of day candidates apply, open emails or use social media, employers can schedule email marketing and social media posts to maximise the number of candidates who will see and click on job postings. Employers can also use this data to optimise their ad spend on job boards, so the ads appear when the best candidates are most likely to be online. One PeopleScout client had data that showed most of its applicants applied after lunch on Wednesdays. By posting jobs just before that timeframe, the employer saw a 15 percent increase in applications.

Finding a Partner

As employers work to build their own talent communities, an RPO provider can be a valuable partner. The right RPO partner will have a wealth of knowledge gleaned from experience solving a wide variety of problems and successfully sourcing and recruiting in a number of markets and industries. Employers can benefit from that collective knowledge.

Additionally, working with an RPO partner provides compliance benefits. Many of the sourcing strategies addressed in this article are impacted by GDPR, CAN-SPAM and other regulations, as well as regulations by the OFCCP. RPO providers have years of experience with these regulations and strong checks in place to ensure all sourcing strategies are compliant. This can provide peace of mind for employers.

Employers working with RPO partners will also see financial benefits, including reducing or eliminating agency spend. At PeopleScout, some clients have gone from agency usage as high as 25 percent or more to zero. To accomplish that, employers need to be committed from the top down to building the sourcing infrastructure to implement a talent community.

To find an RPO partner who is a good fit, employers should look for providers who possess customisable offerings that can be adapted to meet every need. A one-size-fits-all approach ignores the specific needs of employers in different industries and the unique challenges that can arise in recruiting in different markets. To build a strong talent community, employers should look for an RPO partner who can successfully deploy and manage these innovative sourcing strategies.

Workforce Planning: Leveraging Workforce Analytics for Deeper Insights

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To stay competitive in the modern and complex business landscape, organisations need to leverage technology to make more strategic decisions. Many are using big data and analytics to achieve these aims. In fact, 80 percent of executives say their big data investments have been successful, and almost half say their organisations can measure the benefits from their projects.

What’s more, according to Harvard Business Review, organisations that excel in data-driven decision-making are more productive and more profitable than their competitors on average.

Workforce analytics combines statistical analysis and predictive modeling to help organisations make fact-based talent acquisition and management decisions. In this post, we outline how to leverage analytics as part of the workforce planning process.

What is Workforce Planning and What Role do Analytics Play in the Process?

Traditionally, workforce planning has been a reactive way of assessing workforce needs. Organisations typically make annual talent forecasts for how many hires are needed in a role, and those estimates happen before the end of a fiscal year as part of the budget-planning process. This approach to workforce planning lacks the flexibility needed to remain agile and competitive in an evolving and dynamic labour market.

Modern, data-driven workforce planning focuses on the future by assessing current hiring needs and modeling how those needs will evolve. Workforce analytics is the cornerstone of modern workforce planning.

Workforce analytics gathers and analyses data to better inform decisions made in of the process of workforce planning, resulting in the formation of a strategic plan to address workforce challenges. This data-focused approach can assist organisations to match talent forecasts with analysis of the talent pool to create a realistic view of the labour market.

When workforce planning is combined with workforce analytics, organisations are better able to predict future leaders within the organisation, craft succession plans for critical positions and recruit the right talent.

Types of Workforce Analytics

Data analytics has become common across many business functions, from logistics to finance. As organisations look to overcome the skills gap, full-employment and record retirement, they need to develop a systematic process for identifying workforce needs, develop strategies to meet those requirements and implementing them effectively. Below we list three data analytics techniques essential to workforce planning that can help organisations meet changing demands now and in the future.

Predictive Analytics 

Predictive analytics leverages historical data to create predictive models that anticipate what is likely to happen in areas such as employee turnover, skills shortages and shifts in the labour market. By incorporating predictive analytics into workforce planning, techniques such as regression analysis, forecasting, multivariate statistics and pattern matching enable an organisation’s leadership to understand likely talent outcomes and needs of the future.

Diagnostic Analytics

Diagnostic analytics helps contextualise past performance by evaluating performance-based metrics in an attempt to discover the reasons behind past workforce successes or failures. Diagnostic analytics is essential in workforce planning because it can provide organisations with a clearer picture of key workforce performance metrics and trends. The data can then be leveraged to identify unseen workforce performance issues. Armed with insights gleaned from diagnostic analytics organisations can better optimise their workforce plan to align with performance goals.

Prescriptive Analytics 

Similar to predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics uses the same sets of historical workforce data to anticipate the likelihood of specific results or events. What makes prescriptive analytics different is that the data is then leveraged to plan the best next actions based on those predictions. Prescriptive analytics is extremely valuable in workforce planning because it uses available data to recommend measures that could increase the likelihood of desired business and staffing outcomes occurring.

These techniques can provide organisations with concrete and actionable insights on workforce data and help drive better talent strategies. Talent technology solutions such as PeopleScout’s propriety technology, Affinixtm, can help organisations better leverage these techniques and deliver additional value to workforce planning.

Benefits of Workforce Analytics

While the most obvious benefits of workforce analytics are related to time savings, dollars saved and earned, percentage changes, and proof of ROI, there are less tangible benefits of workforce analytics that HR leaders often discover after they have started with their solution. These are benefits related to organisational alignment, team cohesion and company culture. While these benefits are more difficult to measure in concrete terms, they are definitely connected to business outcomes. In the following section, we outline two ways workforce analytics can improve and organisations talent management and recruiting programmes.

Improving Retention and Employee Performance

Workforce analytics can help organisations identify top performers, foster successful employee retention and talent recruitment programmes and ensure the proper workforce is in place to accomplish business goals and objectives.

Furthermore, an employee’s performance data could be used by hiring managers to identify what motivates an organisation’s top talents. This data not only provides more insights about the employees but also shape the strategies to boost the employee morale, retention and engagement.

Improved Hiring Decision With

Workforce analytics make predictive analysis easier and helps HR to make a better choice based on historical data. A great HR analytics tool can make the difference by making the HR easily derive the best candidate to hire from the historical data.

For example, if an organisation hired 20 candidates and 10 out of them are from a particular background failed at it, organisations can avoid hiring candidates from a similar background. Moreover, workforce analytics also allows recruiters to learn more about candidates through an online resume database, applications, social media profiles to learn which traits and attributes are associated with top performers in a certain role.

Conclusion

Today, HR leaders make use of analytics solutions to realise deeper insight into the workforce in order to fuel evidence-based decisions and improve business outcomes. An experienced RPO partner with a consultative approach can help organisations better understand their workforce and tailor talent acquisition strategies to match the client’s goals and objectives and which metrics can best determine the desired impact.

How Robotic Process Automation is Reshaping Recruiting

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Automation is one of the most popular emerging technologies currently being deployed in business. According to the Global Future of Work Survey, conducted by Willis Towers Watson, employers expect that 17 percent of all work will be automated by 2020. What’s more, 94 percent of U.S. organisations currently utilising AI and robotics will increase their use of automation in the next three years.

The increased focus on automation is shifting the way organisations think about business processes such as IT support, data entry, scheduling, workflow and resource management. Beyond these functions, business leaders realise the value of automating HR and recruiting processes. According to research conducted by PwC, 40 percent of the HR functions of international companies are currently using AI-applications. One form of AI — robotic process automation – uses AI to automate business processes to human-like efficiency and effectiveness, making workers more productive. In this post, we outline what robotic process automation technology is, how it can benefit recruiting and how to successfully implement a robotic process automation solution.

What is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic process automation (RPA) refers to technology that utilises bots to replicate human actions for time-consuming but straightforward back-office administrative tasks. RPA software allows users to configure bots to collect data, trigger responses and communicate with other business systems. RPA software integrates with existing tools, so it does not require a complete update of a legacy system; rather, RPA acts as a supplemental enhancement. RPA applications can handle automations that range from a simple task such as automated email responses to managing thousands of bots that complete individual tasks.

According to the Institute for Robotic Process Automation, the top five business departments deploying RPA software are:

  1. Financial operations
  2. Human resources
  3. Information technology
  4. Procurement
  5. Data and analytics

The Recruiting Case for RPA Adoption

Automation and AI technology have been gaining traction in HR and talent acquisition. In fact, according to a LinkedIn survey on talent trends, 35 percent of talent professionals and hiring managers say that AI is the top trend impacting how they hire.

For organisations looking to optimise their recruiting, RPA software can provide time savings, increase recruiting accuracy and help reduce bias in the recruiting process. RPA technology can also be utilised for high-level repetitive tasks such as candidate and resume screening. RPA systems can work every hour of every day to source, screen and organise candidates. This gives recruiters more time to establish a more consultative relationship with clients and better engage candidates in a personal one-on-one relationship.

An RPA software solution can help optimise an organisation’s HR department and recruitment initiatives through the automation of tasks such as the following:

  • Sending automated communications such as auto reply emails and texts to candidates.
  • Collecting, processing and organising candidate information and storing it in an organisations ATS system.
  • Recruiting process such as candidate sourcing and screening.
  • Answering simple questions from candidates and providing automated application instructions.

HR and Recruiting Applications for Robotic Process Automation Technology

Learning and understanding the value of RPA and HR automation provides forward-thinking organizations and talent acquisition professionals additional tools to improve recruiting efforts. Below, we list several HR applications of RPA technology and how they can improve HR and recruiting functions.

Sourcing Candidates

According to a LinkedIn report, 90 percent of global professionals want to hear from recruiters to talk and learn more about opportunities. With so many candidates willing to entertain prospective job opportunities, it can be nearly impossible for recruiters to engage with every qualified candidate. RPA technology can automate the online sourcing process by canvassing hundreds of talent pools and databases for quality candidates.

With bots sourcing candidates on the web, recruiters can spend more time consulting clients on talent acquisition strategies such as improving employment offers and bolstering recruitment marketing campaigns. With bots sourcing candidates and expert talent acquisition professionals offering guidance, organisations will be better positioned to extend attractive employment offers to top talent.

Chatbots

RPA technology can deploy chatbots that leverage sentiment analysis and computational linguistics to interpret a candidate’s communication and to formulate an appropriate response. Chatbots enable organisations to offer a more responsive and engaging candidate experience by eliminating the downtime between a candidate submitting an application and receiving a response from a recruiter.

Chatbots can also perform the following tasks:

  • Ask candidates for their resume, cover letter and contact information
  • Ask pre-screening questions regarding a candidate’s education, experience and skills
  • Answer candidates’ FAQs about advertised jobs and the application and hiring process
  • Schedule an interview with a recruiter or hiring manager

Enhancing Recruitment Marketing Campaigns

RPAs can help organisations by reliably engaging and communicating with candidates. Recruiters can design attractive email campaigns that can be sequenced and programmed to “drip” messages to both passive and active candidates, creating a higher level of engagement. Automating recruitment marketing campaigns ensures regular correspondence and delivers relevant job postings and content to multiple candidates. This builds more robust talent pipelines and strengthens an employer’s brand.

Interview Scheduling

RPA technology can also assist both an organisation’s HR team and candidates with the interview scheduling process. RPA bots can provide candidates with real-time access to a recruiter or hiring manager’s calendar and suggest specific time slots based on availability. After a candidate selects an interview time, an automated invite is sent to both interviewers and interviewees and the scheduled time becomes unavailable for other candidates. What’s more, if an organisation utilises a video interviewing platform, bots can send automated emails containing links and instructions on how to complete the video interview. Hiring managers can then review interviews and select the best candidates for in-person follow-ups.

Enhanced Candidate Experience

With RPA tools, organisations can better manage their candidate experience. Bots can be used to collect real-time data throughout the candidate experience and monitor candidate satisfaction in each stage of the hiring process. Recruiters can programme bots to generate emails soliciting feedback or short surveys as candidates progress through the process.

While automation can help improve and monitor candidate experience that does not mean every component in the process should be turned over to technology. Talent acquisition leaders need to remember that humans make a difference when it comes to engaging candidates.

Affinix

Affinixtm, PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology stack, utilises many of the automated functions made available through RPA software like AI-enabled software, automated email drip campaigns and chatbots.

Best Practices for Integrating Robotic Process Automation Technology into the Recruiting Process

While RPA technology can make HR and recruiting functions more efficient, organisations need to be aware of how to successfully implement the technology into their current systems. Below, we outline a three-step process to successfully implementing an RPA tool into your recruiting and hiring process.

Best Practices for RPA Process Selection

The RPA implementation process begins with identifying the recruiting processes that would most benefit from automation. To begin, HR leaders should conduct a high-level assessment of potential recruiting processes for automation and document the efficiencies and cost-savings that could result from automating each process. This step helps HR leaders, IT and an organisation’s leadership decide which recruiting functions will benefit the most from automation. Not all HR and recruiting function are a good fit for RPA, so identifying the right ones depends on the unique needs of an organisation.

More process selection tips include:

  • Research RPA capabilities to learn what’s possible through automation.
  • Outline project team members and their roles and responsibilities during the preliminary assessment process (i.e., stakeholders, recruiters, SMEs, technology evaluators).
  • Research the compliance risks associated with each recruiting process, for example, CAN-SPAM rules governing commercial emails.
  • Collaborate with stakeholders for guidance and strategic direction regarding establishing automated processes.

Best Practices for Implementing an RPA Solution

HR leaders need to make sure that HR, IT and talent acquisition personnel are trained and prepared to execute the implementation plan. Moreover, each implementation activity should be documented, tracked and completed per the plan.

During this step, those responsible for implementation need to thoroughly go over the end-to-end automation of selected recruiting functions to learn the full scope of the RPA solution. If errors and missteps occur in an automated process, organisations need to work with their RPA partners to refine and make final modifications before implementing the new processes. No matter how well an organisation implements an RPA solution, it is still important to monitor and periodically amend the RPA programme to ensure long-term success.

Conclusion

Robotic process automation is a valuable tool for streamlining the recruiting and hiring process. Leveraging automation in recruiting empowers talent acquisition and HR professionals to make the right hiring decisions faster by increasing efficiency across recruitment functions. However, for RPA technology to have a positive impact on an organisation, it is important to remember that human interaction with candidates is paramount. Organisations need to find the right balance between talent technology and human interaction.

How to Create a Workforce Equipped with the Skills of the Future

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Automation is transforming the way we work. The World Economic Forum calls this change the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is characterised by a “fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.” In short, technology is disrupting nearly every industry, at a pace that has never happened before.

This pace of change means that employers need to take a proactive role in ensuring they have a workforce equipped with the skills of the future in order to avoid skills gaps. To accomplish this, employers first need to understand the skills they will need to remain competitive and innovative. Then, they need to understand how best to prepare and train their current workforce, as well as prepare to source, recruit and hire the talent of the future. In this post, we’ll share the top skills of the future, how technology is changing the way we work and explore ways organisations can prepare for the workforce of the future.

Skills of the Future

According to the World Economic Forum, the top ten skills you need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution have shifted in the last several years, prioritising complex problem solving, critical thinking and creativity as the top three skills and adding emotional intelligence to the list.

The following ten skills are listed as the most in demand for employers by 2020:

  1. Complex problem solving
  2. Critical thinking
  3. Creativity
  4. People management
  5. Coordinating with others
  6. Emotional intelligence
  7. Judgment and decision making
  8. Service orientation
  9. Negotiation
  10. Cognitive flexibility

This list reflects the fact that robots can complete many tasks faster than humans, but the machines still lack soft skills like creativity and emotional skills. As technology takes on more of the workload, the most in-demand employees will be those who possess the skills that computers cannot replicate. However, the need also increases for workers who have the skills to use, build and innovate the technology of the future.

Automation is Changing the Way We Work

It’s no secret that automation is fundamentally changing the way many industries operate, increasing the demand for tech and digital skills in the workforce. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, as many as 375 million people around the world will need to change occupational categories by 2030 due to automation.

Let’s explore this idea using the example of the impact of automation on the automobile industry. Some of the most well-known innovations in automation have happened in the industry – starting with Henry Ford’s assembly line. Now, companies around the world are racing to bring autonomous cars to market. We expect that the first autonomous cars will be available for sale to the public as early as 2021. The link to the potential disruption in complementary industries from delivery services to drive-through restaurants is overwhelming. However, it is an excellent example to use to illustrate the complexity of the skills needed for the future.

The skills required to deliver the cars to market are both highly technical and analytical.  However, the skills needed to design and operate the vehicles of the future are more complicated. Skills in design thinking and innovation will be critical. Programmers will need to ensure safety in weather conditions from blizzards to heavy rains and navigate autonomous cars and trucks through road construction and complicated intersections and interchanges.  They may be faced with programming life and death decision-making into the vehicles, which are inherently complex human behaviours requiring emotional and social intelligence skills above all others.

How to Prepare the Future Workforce

The Transformation of Talent

Automation and the skills transformation will affect many industries over the next decade, but lessons can be learned from the industries that have already come through the journey, transforming their workforce in order to deliver to a new business model. This transformation is illustrated with an example of one of PeopleScout’s clients, a company which provides research and risk management services.

The company began migrating customers from the traditional print version of their core product to an online version available on multiple platforms. This was a complicated and highly-involved transformation which impacted everyone from their internal workforce to their heavily print-dependent end-user. To illustrate the skills transformation that occurred, since that point in time, the number of technology hires PeopleScout makes for this client has increased 500 percent. This includes roles like product analysts, product managers and implementation consultants. At the same time, hires for editorial roles like editors, journalists and content developers have increased only 14 percent. And, 100 percent of editorial roles filled were for their online research product; no positions filled were for the traditional print product.

In order to help guide this client through their talent transformation, PeopleScout worked closely with the internal HR function to adapt their candidate personas for both external hiring and internal mobility. We then developed sophisticated sourcing strategies to source candidates with skill sets that would meet the needs of the new organisation. In addition to sourcing new candidates internally and externally, there were also efforts to analyse which traditional roles had transferrable skills to the requirements of the new roles. This was a journey to take a traditional business and transform it into a technology company and substantially shifting the workforce to meet the new strategy.

Future Skill Degree Programmes

Another way employers can prepare for the future workforce is through working closely with high schools, colleges, universities, apprenticeships and graduate recruitment programmes to help develop degree programmes that meet the skills of the future. By building these programmes, employers can ensure that graduates have the skills necessary to succeed in the coming years.

The importance of high school programmes is not yet as obvious as those in higher education, but many businesses and universities have started working with high schools to source and attract new talent early. The programmes are particularly significant in industries where there is a forecasted talent gap. For example, Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy students in Sydney have the opportunity to partner with an engineering company to learn valuable job skills and open up thinking about new career pathways.

I recently participated in a panel discussion with other industry leaders as well as a professor at a university in Sydney. The professor shared that the university spent time with CEOs and business leaders asking them what skills they felt their organisations needed to ensure their business was successful in the future. As a result of those conversations, the university created a highly-innovative, cross-disciplinary degree programme designed to produce students with skills that include high-level critical thinking, future scenario building and innovation, as well as many other skills identified in the World Economic Forum top ten list.

However, in the first year of the programme, they had minimal applicants. Why would such an innovative and carefully-designed degree have so little applicants? More work may need to be done to ensure that parents and students are fully educated on the necessary skill sets to be successful in the future of work.

How to Prepare your Current Workforce

Employers cannot simply wait for the workforce of tomorrow to arrive. To stay ahead, it is necessary to train and prepare current workers for these shifts. To make this a priority, HR and the C-suite need to be aligned on what roles will be needed in the next three, five or ten years, as well as what skills will be needed to fill those roles. The roles that exist now may transform or disappear altogether, and new skill sets will be necessary for the business to drive growth and strategy. Both need to be open-minded about the transferrable skills in order to ensure success in having the talent to deliver key business outcomes.

Reskilling Programmes

In some countries, governments have taken on some of the burden of reskilling. For example, the Australian government has established the Skilling Australians Fund which provides $1.5 billion to support apprenticeships, traineeships and other employer-related training. The goal is to retrain more Australian workers with the skills needed in the tourism, hospitality, health, engineering, manufacturing, building and construction, agriculture and digital technologies industries. The programme is targeted toward automotive workers who lost jobs due to closing car manufacturing plants.

In the United Kingdom, the government plans to spend as much as 500 million pounds per year on worker training to combat low productivity. According to Reuters, the spending could reach as high as nearly 6 billion pounds on academic and technical education which will transform the system of technical education and increase the amount of training available by more than 50 percent.

Moving forward, governments could also potentially track metrics around reskilling opportunities as well as metrics for job creation in order to drive these initiatives even further forward.

How an RPO Provider Can Help Prepare for the Skills of the Future

An RPO provider can be a valuable partner for employers looking to prepare their workforces for the skills of the future. RPO providers can help organisations adapt their candidate personas, to ensure they are sourcing talent with the necessary skills and identifying new ways to target candidates who fit these personas. In addition, they can work with internal HR departments to demonstrate how candidates who may not have an exact profile for a role have the transferrable skills to be successful.

An RPO can also help build graduate and internship recruitment programmes and partner with schools and government programmes to find candidates from new sources with new skills.

An experienced RPO provider can also help you build your talent pool from within your own company, by consulting to develop an internal reskilling programme and helping reevaluate your current positions and workforce mix to ensure your organisation is targeting the right talent.

To stay ahead in the rapidly changing talent landscape, employers should evaluate their current workforce needs, the skills they have within their current employee talent pool and seek out an RPO provider who can act as a partner in sourcing, recruiting and training employees with the skills of the future.

Predictive Analytics: A Powerful Talent Acquisition Tool

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In this tightening talent market with unemployment rates at record lows, predictive analytics is emerging as an essential AI tool for employers looking to stay ahead of the competition. Applications of artificial intelligence are transforming the talent acquisition process. As an AI tool, predictive analytics allows employers to use the power of data to make predictions about candidates and drive efficiencies throughout the entire talent acquisition process.

What is Predictive Analytics?

Predictive analytics is a type of data analytics that uses data to find patterns and then uses those models to attempt to predict the future. Predictive analytics can’t tell you what will happen, but it shows what is likely to happen based on past trends. It’s as close as employers can get to predicting the future.

The ability to make these predictions helps shorten the entire recruiting process while making stronger hires. In a competitive talent market, this allows employers to identify the top talent for a particular role and make an offer to the best candidates faster than the competition. For employers, this results in improvements in time-to-hire and quality-of-hire, and for candidates, it builds a better experience, leaving a positive impression that will factor into their decision to accept an offer.

Using Predictive Analytics to Improve Sourcing

During the sourcing process, predictive analytics models can identify stronger candidates more quickly and accurately than traditional methods. AI sourcing that uses predictive models can provide recruiters with a solid slate of candidates as soon as a requisition is opened, giving the recruiter a strong head start to fill the role. An AI sourcing solution that uses predictive analytics modeling can also provide the recruiter with information about how well the candidate matches the job opening and how likely the candidate is to leave their current role. With this information, recruiters are able to work more quickly and efficiently, filling the role with the best talent in less time. In the end, it saves companies time and money.

To roll out a predictive analytics sourcing tool, employers first need to establish what makes a good hire. This requires looking back into data from previous hires that demonstrates how well those hires performed. This step is critical because employers may find that the factors that predict success are not what they thought. For instance, when filling certain roles, employers may prioritise candidates with advanced degrees. However, data may show that an advanced degree is not a reliable predictor of success. Instead, industry experience or high scores on a pre-employment assessment may better predict the success of a candidate.

Once an employer has the data to identify qualities that predict success, the predictive analytics technology that’s part of an AI sourcing tool can use that information to identify candidates who match that criteria. The technology can scour social media sites, job boards, talent communities and networking and career sites to find the best talent. Using available data, the tool will make predictions about the candidate, and the recruiter can use those predictions to determine which candidates to target for more personalised communication.

As recruiters use the predictive analytics tool, they constantly feed more data into the system. This means that over time, the technology is able to learn more and make even more accurate predictions about candidate success. At PeopleScout, AI sourcing using predictive analytics is a key component of AffinixTM, our proprietary talent technology.

When implementing a predictive analytics sourcing tool, there are a few important considerations to ensure success. The first is making sure that data you use is good, accurate data. You need accurate information about previous hires, including pre- and post-hire information. Since an RPO is only engaged through the hiring and onboarding process, if you’re using an RPO to manage your talent acquisition, it’s important to share post-hire data that demonstrates whether the candidate made a strong employee. Knowing about performance or employee tenure will make predictive analytics tools more powerful. To make that data work for you, it is key that you share that post-hire data with your RPO partner.

Using Predictive Analytics to Make Your Recruitment Funnel More Efficient

In addition to sourcing, predictive analytics can be used throughout the entire recruitment process to drive efficiencies in an employer’s recruitment funnel. A recruitment funnel encompasses all of the steps between when a candidate applies for a position until that candidate is hired. At different steps in the recruitment funnel, candidates will either be eliminated from consideration or move along in the process.

For instance, in a recruitment funnel, an employer may receive 100 applications. During the initial resume screen, a portion of those candidates will be eliminated. After a phone screen, more candidates will be eliminated. The process continues until there is one candidate left and the employer makes the hire.

By analysing the recruitment funnel, you can work backward to learn how many applicants are necessary to make one hire. To accomplish this, you need multiple data points from a large number of hires. The more data you have, the better and more accurate a prediction will be. That data will give you an understanding of what your recruitment funnel looks like now, and from there, predictive analytics technology can make the process more efficient, which means you would need fewer applicants to hire the right candidate. That turns into decreased time-to-fill and cost-per-hire, while increasing the quality-of-hire.

As in the souring process addressed above, you need to start by evaluating and analysing existing data. Again, this is a process where the quality of the data will determine the outcome. By analysing data about factors that can predict successful hires, the predictive analytics tool will learn what qualities make for a strong hire. Like in the sourcing process, the data may tell a story that you don’t expect about what makes a good employee. For instance, you may expect your strongest hires to come from a specific degree programme at a nearby university, so you spend significant time and money recruiting those graduates. A predictive analytics tool could help identify other university programmes that produce candidates who also match your hiring needs.

With the data about candidate success, you can tailor the entire application process. If the best candidates come from certain sources – job boards, employee referral programmes, etc. – you can target your recruitment marketing spend to connect with those candidates and decrease or eliminate advertising that doesn’t yield strong results. When you start with stronger candidates, you need fewer applicants to make a quality hire.

Predictive Analytics Considerations

You should also ensure that your RPO partner uses a technology that is programmed to prevent discrimination and has external checks in place to be sure that isn’t taking place. The technology cannot take factors like gender, race or disability into account as it combs the web for candidates, as this could violate anti-discrimination laws. Additionally, you must take care that the technology does not learn biases from the people who use it. When used correctly, predictive analytics technology can help eliminate discrimination from the recruiting process. It is important to look at variables like race and gender to measure potential bias, but the technology should not use that information to target or exclude candidates. To help prevent discrimination, combining the technology with the intelligence of the recruiter is the differentiator.

Finding a Partner

When looking for a predictive analytics technology solution, it is important to work with a partner with deep expertise of not only the technology but the entire talent landscape. You should look for an RPO provider that can respond to the unique challenges of your industry and that has an end-to-end technology solution that can be customised to your needs.

In an industry-leading technology solution, predictive analytics should be integrated throughout the entire process so that you’re able to harness the full power of the data. If your data analytics tool in the sourcing process operates independently of the data analytics tool that operates later in your recruiting funnel, you risk losing valuable insights. PeopleScout’s Affinix combines the best recruitment technology in the industry, and fully integrates the entire process. With Affinix, our clients get the most out of their data.

When working with an RPO provider, employers will also benefit from the data that the RPO has across its entire client base and in your industry. You can use that data to benchmark and improve your own programmes. To get the most out of the partnership, it is important to work out an agreement where you share post-hire data with your RPO provider. Data is valuable, and good data is what makes a predictive analytics programme successful. Sharing data with your partner ensures you have the strongest possible souring and recruitment solution.

Predictive analytics should be a part of an overall talent acquisition programme and a complete technology solution. To stay ahead in a tight talent market, employers should use the power of data to make better hires, faster.