If you missed the initial release of the 2022 Talent Acquisition (TA) Planning Kit in November, it’s not too late. With a new year comes new beginnings, and we’re just getting started. So, let’s bring in the new year by taking a fresh look at strategies to tackle your hiring goals head-on!
We’ve condensed general takeaways from the 2022 TA Planning Kit below, but we would advise looking at the kit yourself for a more granular, in-depth look at what it will take to truly revolutionize your talent acquisition process.
1. Create a High-Level Strategy
Start at the top by creating a high-level strategy. Considering not only planned headcount growth and budget for 2022 but also the possible effects of the “Great Resignation” and internal mobility on hiring needs for your organization, estimate the number of new hires your organization will need this year. Using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Based) goal methodology, you should determine a realistic number of high-level goals your TA team can achieve. With these goals in mind, you can lay out a series of recruiting programs and hiring events that will help you to achieve hiring goals throughout the year. Finally, build out detailed program plans, lending more detail to closer deadlines.
2. Develop Candidate Personas
You can think of a candidate persona like a fictional character based on statistically common characteristics of the types of people you would like to attract, engage, and hire. This can create a better candidate experience by increasing personalization, and it has the potential to either support or reshape company culture and support your 2022 goals.
3. Build Targeted Audience Plans
You should identify, prioritize, and nurture your organization’s relationships with three key audiences:
- Key Talent: those with the experience and skills to fill high-volume or critical positions
- Strategic Talent: those who fall under key demographics like underrepresented groups or veterans and students
- Relationship Audiences: those who already have some relationship with your organization, such as employees, referrals, or past applicants
Once identified, it will be up to your TA team to build and deliver engaging, relevant content—think branded and targeted career landing pages.
4. Refocus on DEI
Take a look at your organization’s recent DEI initiatives and determine which of four buckets you fall into: (1) Reactive, (2) Proactive, (3) Progressive, or (4) Best-in-Class. After reflecting on both recent successes and areas of improvement in this area, you should compare the current state of your DEI programs to their ideal state by EOY’22 to give yourself a clear roadmap—identifying clear areas of improvement is already a step in the right direction. Finally, do some research to learn how technology can help propel you down the path(s) you’ve identified.
5. Reconsider your TA Metrics
A new year is a great time to revisit the metrics you are measuring. You should begin by assessing candidate pool health. This will give you great insight into how your team has handled the hiring process as the health of your candidate pool generally follows the level of candidate engagement in your hiring process. Compare metrics like email open rate or time since last email engagement to those of best-in-class organizations (details in worksheet five of Jobvite’s 2022 TA Planning Kit) to determine how successful your team is engaging candidates via email or text message.
You should also take the time to nail down the KPIs most relevant to your immediate needs and assess their current state compared to their ideal state. Work with all invested parties from recruiters and hiring managers to upper management to identify potential bottlenecks in your process as well as their potential solutions.
6. Improve Return on Investment (ROI) of Recruitment Spend
Half of all companies don’t measure ROI on recruitment solutions, but almost two-thirds of recruiters are expecting a hike in recruitment spending in 2022. Taking a measure of recruitment spend ROI will allow your team to make the most of every bit of hard-won budget, and it will allow you to account for the value of recruitment expenses to leaders at your organization. You should take note of the solutions in your TA tech stack and balance the costs and benefits to determine the true value provided by those solutions. Try to garner a holistic understanding of these benefits and costs by considering stakeholders at every level—identify internal champions for high ROI solutions and consider researching other options for solutions that are delivering only a sub-par return.
7. Get More from Employee Referrals
Employee referrals can lead to higher converting, higher quality, longer-lasting employees, so don’t overlook this strategy in your 2022 planning. You can begin reassessing your current employee referral program by reestablishing goals and objectives—how many employee referral hires do you want in 2022? And how realistic is that goal? Next, you can establish an incentive—employees who enjoy their time at your organization will be interested in sharing with friends and colleagues, but incentivizing it turns their interest into a priority. Empower your employees to help you—make your requisitions easily sharable across social media to encourage employee social engagement. Finally, you should be actively tracking your referrals to ensure you know how and where your best referrals come from.
8. Create an Outstanding Onboarding Experience
New hires are two times more likely to look for work elsewhere after a poor onboarding experience, so ensure you give them a reason to stay at the outset. To improve your onboarding process, you should determine onboarding objectives and understand which steps are and are not working. You can do this by simply writing out the steps of your onboarding process, noting the desired outcome of each step, and identifying where the pitfalls happen to be. Once potential areas for improvement have been identified, you can brainstorm with your team and network to determine more efficient practices. (Check out worksheet 8 of Jobvite’s 2022 TA Planning Kit for an extensive list of onboarding best practices).
9. Invest in Yourself
You should assess your TA function to determine where your team is strong and where you might be able to turn it up a notch—then you should take time to grow your own skills. Jobvite’s EVOLVE TA Framework offers a technology-agnostic quick assessment that you and your team can take to identify those areas that help or hinder your recruitment process across the three pillars of TA—Recruitment Marketing, Applicant Management, and TA Operations. Then, consider enrolling in Jobvite Academy, an online learning center where you can expand your skill set, while simultaneously earning SHRM + HRCI credits.
More on TA strategy and planning
You can also tune in to the upcoming 2022 Planning Webinar on January 25 at 2 pm ET. This live event features Peggy Anderson, Head of TA at Shutterfly, Kristal Shropshire, Director of TA at Achievement Network, and Jobvite’s very own head of TA, Josh Jones. These experts will discuss the tools and strategies successful TA leaders are putting in place to crush hiring goals in 2022 and create real value for their respective organizations.
