Are We Future Fit?

Are We Future Fit?

I feel like I have DeJa’Vu all over again. All over LinkedIn I am seeing the same posts… organisations are downsizing, and recruitment teams are being let go once again? (Why is it always us you guys? Rose… there’s still room on the door for Jack!!!!)

Because organisations still see Talent Acquisition as transactional, order filling, one dimensional functions.

BUT…. Have we made think of us any other way? Stay with me here, and you will see why I am saying that.

The interesting thing to note here is – we’ve been here before….. many, MANY times before.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane shall we….

• .Com crash in 2000-2002
  • Recovery
• GFC – 2007/2008
  • Recovery
• COVID – 2020-2022
  • Recovery
• Post Covid recession – 2022 - ?

Recruitment Demand since 2000

See the pattern here? We know recruitment is cyclical and driven by the economy (please read my blog if you haven’t already on “Marketing isn’t recruitment, economics is” to find out more).

Basically, the fundamental principles are growth markets mean expansion agendas = hiring, slowing markets mean hold or reduce = reduction

You know what happens after a recession? Monetary policy interventions are applied to stimulate the economy to grow again… what happens in growth periods? Hiring! You guessed it!

Studies have shown it takes between 6-9 months to replace an employee with a fully operational replacement, so let’s do the math in recruitment:

Internal Talent Acquisition Professional earns on average $140,000 per year

Using a 6-month upskilling window:

Cost to replace: $84,000

How many recruiters do you need to replace after you let the team go? For argument sake – let’s say 2.

Total cost to replace recruiters let down in a downturn: $168,000 (Loss of IP…. Priceless)

So, tell me again how this is a commercially smart decision to downsize your recruitment team, only to re-recruit when the market recovers on average 12 months later?

The thing about bust cycles, is that they are followed (usually fairly quickly) by some sort of balancing or equalizing, then a boom, so if we know these patterns, why hasn’t talent acquisition yet figured out a way to bake this into our models, into our delivery model so that we have the ability to pivot and flex based on the talent demand we are in?

Why is it as a function we are so focussed on recruiting externally as the main source of talent, that during times of market softening (AKA now), we don’t pivot to other areas of talent that have always been there i.e., internal mobility, internal skills development, capability uplift, augmentation etc.

We have taught organisations we are only good for the external recruitment of talent, but only when there is a job to fill, when realistically talent comes in many forms (as described above) so our roles really fundamentally should change – merely just the source of that talent, and what we do with it.

So, what does all this mean for Talent Acquisition? Well – it means we need to change. We need to change our thinking, and we need to change our approach to what talent means.

We have heard the term Talent Advisory gaining momentum within the industry. (for those that haven’t – talent advisory is the change of role profile in terms of what talent acquisition partners do within their organisations – think more proactive and less reactive, guided by market intelligence and insights, strategic aligned to their organisations, not operating as order fillers etc) I have certainly first come to really understand talent advisory in the true sense of the role by Trevor Vas and the team at TCS. (disclaimer – I am associated with TCS – however this was after I explored talent advisory within Toll and became its biggest advocate after seeing what it meant for my recruiters!)

I’ve always been interested in why we seem to only “acquire” talent as the name suggests. I know its due to the volume that recruiters have to manage, which really only leaves for reactive, order taking and very little room for anything else.

But – do we have the capability to do more? What if the market changes, and we no longer have the luxury to simply acquire talent externally?

What about mobilising, growing, developing, augmenting, optimising, or even in some cases – redeploying or exiting it? Have we in our day-to-day haste of filling jobs and moving on to the next job robbed ourselves of the opportunity to do more in organisations? Have we got underdeveloped capabilities to do more?

So as predicted, the market has shifted, and this time earlier than predicted. Now I don’t think this will be a particularly long, nor deep period – rather a market correction as a result of a booming post covid recovery that saw over inflated salaries as a result of high levels of demand within a talent locked market.

So – are we future fit? Sadly, for some of us, the answer is no.

So, what do we do about it?

Change the way we view ourselves and our functions, and pivot into talent advisory.

So, what does talent advisory look like? Well, it relies different traits, skills and competencies to a standard recruiter, but there are some that would be currently utilised by recruiters, just in different capacities.

Some initial skills could include proactive sourcing, now depending on the context within your talent function, I’m sure in varying degrees your recruiters are performing some level of sourcing.

I am certainly a believer that where you can separate recruitment and sourcing, then do so, but that still mean that your recruiters don’t need to know the basics of sourcing at all, it just means that maybe they just do a different piece of it.

Market intelligence – now this is a biggie for me, as nailing this means you can read your market movements ahead of time, and know what makes your organisation move, which means you can develop talent strategies via talent data, coupled with market intelligence to make develop talent strategies designed with the context of the markets you are in.

Talent analytics, whilst a relatively newish theme within talent, we sit on tremendous amounts of data in our roles.

From attrition numbers to talent supply, to talent location, compensation and benefits, talent demand insights, as well as our own funnel data. This all overlayed together paints a very, very clear for your organisation on their talent pulse. 

True talent advisors uses analytics to educate, inform, and influence their organisations….

As the talent decisions are being made, not once the vacancy is there.

So how do we start to future proof ourselves?

Start by doing a stocktake of your current role and see if you are just performing a standard, reactive, transactional role (which is totally fine by the way!) and start thinking about how to can build some new skills and knowledge that will start moving you into more of the talent advisory side.

 If you can think about all the ways you can expand your role and impact beyond that of just filling vacancies – then you can start to make yourself more future fit, more market immune, and add significant value to your organisation by influencing all facets of talent, not just simply by acquiring it.

A always, I'd love to know what you think about all this!

J. xx