Forbes confirms one of the top 10 HR trends for the 2022 workplace to be the upskilling of HR.
By Celeste Sirin, MD at Employer Branding Africa.
The Great Resignation, the Great Reshuffle, the Great Reset or the Great Revolt – coin it what you will, the fact remains that many people have entered the first quarter of this year with a clearer understanding of what they’re looking for from their ideal employer.
The ebb and flow of people moving between jobs is no different, but now more than ever, companies will need a well-defined, unique employer value proposition if they wish to retain their valued employees and secure the best talent.
Talent will continue to look to shift to a company that can align with their sense of purpose, belonging and values. Over and above monetary rewards, people have also begun to realise the dire need for work-life integration and balance, family time and the need for greater flexibility, remote working, continuous learning, career development and growth and more.
The skills gap continues to grow with Companies aggressively competing for digital talent. LinkedIn confirms that, with demand for recruiters increasing by seven percent. The emerging borderless global talent market has presented recruiters and talent acquisition specialists with enormous opportunities to recruit for companies across the globe.
This presents local recruiters with the fantastic opportunity of global exposure and best practice and learnings, and lucrative earnings. However, they are now under a lot of pressure to find the right talent.
For recruiters to outperform their counterparts, they need to be aligned with universally recognised trends, tools, solutions, training and a budget to assist them to perform at their optimal best.
Employer branding and recruitment marketing are two critical recruitment best practices that should sit in today’s recruiter’s toolbox of skills. In a recent survey of HR professionals, 74 percent of respondents said they are struggling to hire qualified talent, and 57 percent say voluntary resignations are higher than in previous years.
So what is essential in the DNA of today’s modern day recruiter, talent leader, talent acquisition specialist or HR business partner?
Consultant/advisor and professional partner: To educate and inform hiring managers that transactional order taking to unpack pure hygiene factors of the job is not sufficient to compete for the best talent. The ability to ask the right questions to highlight your employer brand, EVP, USPs, candidate persona, and unique differentiators is essential to build an excellent job advert to attract the right talent. Cultural aspects, candidate fit and power competencies are becoming equally important as skills and pay scales.
Great recruiters hire great people. Good conversations and human value have gone up.
Market researcher and data analyst: Leverage negotiation skills with your hiring managers by completing field research, collecting the data and arriving informed at the briefing. Factors to consider include candidate market insights, availability of talent, conversion ratios through your recruitment funnel, historical recruitment data, skills, salaries payable and skills transfer, among others.
Employer brand marketers: As content creators, distributors and communicators of information more can be spoken about, and promoted by recruiters when partnering with hiring managers to create a modern candidate experience – one that aligns with market behaviour, shows subject matter expertise and ultimately creates brand awareness within a target audience. A great recruiter and hiring manager partnership can certainly assist companies in competing and securing the best talent.
Employer brand advocate: Be clear on your company’s unique differentiators, as far as your Employer Value Proposition, values and company culture is concerned. Your EVP is your currency to compete, especially when it comes to securing talent in high demand roles.
Personal branding: We have all repeatedly heard that people do business with people they know, like, and trust, however value and a positive experience is what candidates are seeking in today’s labour market. While the war for talent continues, recruiters need to be likeable, professional, knowledgeable and credible to earn a jobseeker’s trust. Part of a company’s employer brand strategy should be that of recruiters ensuring that their social media footprint is up to date, with personal content regarding the recruiter’s competencies, underpinned by the company’s distinct/supportive EVP drivers, to build credibility and elevation of both the recruiter’s personal brand and company reputation.
Social marketers and recruiters: Modern day recruiters cannot optimally secure the best talent if they are not actively leveraging social networks. Social media marketing is essential if your talent leaders intend to inform, shape and promote the employer brands and EVPs at pre-hiring stage. Simultaneously social recruiting is beginning to rank extremely favourably ahead of job board advertising and employee referrals with a recent study by Career Arc, confirming that 92 percent of employers are using social networks to find talent.
Forbes confirms one of the top 10 HR trends for the 2022 workplace to be the upskilling of HR. A key finding was that “HR focusing on training and upskilling key business roles and forgets about upskilling their own team members. The HR and Learning teams have become the cobbler’s children, forgotten and left to their own devices to upskill themselves. This needs to change.”
Building a culture of lifelong learning and upskilling learning and development are the top priorities. Recruiters who lack the knowledge and skill of employer branding and recruitment marketing will find it challenging to compete with their advantaged and well-equipped competitors hard at work in retaining, engaging and attracting the best talent for their companies.
