The answer to that question probably depends on who you ask. For Social Recruiting Strategies Conference Speaker and President of The Sourcing Institute, Shally Steckerl, the answer is a resounding "Yes, recruiting is broken" and what we know as sourcing needs an overhaul. So let's look at the facts, as reported in Jibe's 2014 Talent Acquisition report:

  • Nearly 20% ofjob seekers would rather spend an entire day at the DMV than go through simply applying for a job online.
  • 71% see the process of finding a new job as "discouraging"
  • 60% report their job search as being "painful."

These stats certainly don't speak well to the success of recruitment - at least, not from a candidate experience perspective. But is candidate experience really what it's all about?

THE STATE OF THE RECRUITMENT UNION

While it's easy to focus on the import of candidate experience in recruitment given the impact that it has on business operations - almost 40 percent of candidates with a positive recruitment experience report increased brand loyalty resulting in buying more of the goods or services the company sells, even if they weren’t ultimately hired; while 30 percent of those with negative experiences would buy less goods or services. By most accounts, recruitment is still overwhelmingly a reactive function with rudimentary and/or largely outdated marketing techniques employed to try to attract and acquire the greatest resource a company needs to succeed: its workers. Which is at the crux of Steckerl's issue with the state of the recruitment union. We've all heard the idiom that recruiters are there to "put butts in seats" without too much regard to whether or not the company is attractive to candidates. Someone will want to work for them, after all. It's status quo for many companies. "Think of cigarette companies, for example," Steckerl mentions. "They make products that kill people and they need people to be able to do it. So what do they say? 'We literally kill people - come work for us?' Obviously, no one says it like that - but it's the stark reality of it." Recruitment starts at a disadvantage and stays there: traditional recruitment is a cost-centric model, success primarily measured by the number of hires. The advent of social media has added in a few other metrics such as brand awareness, reach and engagement... but while it's often heralded as the darling of recruitment, leaders really still only look as far as the number of applications to interviews to ultimate successful hires.

A NEW FOUNDATION AND AN EYE TO THE FUTURE

In the 2014 State of Social Talent Acquisition survey released by Brandon Hall, analyst Kyle Lagunas lays out a guide to building a talent acquisition strategy that leverages social media effectively through understanding the application of social media across various recruitment & hiring channels, findings from the survey, and examination of the role technology plays in talent acquisition. In going through the report, what stood out the most was the stark difference in perceived program success between those that employed social recruitment techniques and tactics in a "learn-on-the-fly" or "post-and-pray" manner similar to job advertisements with those who had a written, defined strategy for social media as channel marketing. It comes as little surprise that the latter enjoyed significantly more success than the former. Take a look at the top objectives and use cases for social recruiting in most of the responding organizations. Only 8% were focused on candidate experience - though Candidate Experience data shows that 61% of candidates who had a positive recruitment experience would actively encourage people they know to apply to the organization and 40% would buy more of the company's goods/services. And of those with a negative experience, 27% would actively discourageothers from applying and 30% would buy less goods or services. This results in bottom-line impact to the business - both in terms of productivity and revenue... yet it's not worth 10% of the "head space" of today's leaders of recruitment strategy.  

SRSC-Infographic-Final

Steckerl provides a different solution from shoring up social recruitment to improve talent acquisition: "Sourcing is the answer to the recruiting problem - Approach people directly and build a sourcing competency within the organization." Sourcing is an asset because it's focused on finding the NEXT "great" hire, he says. Need a crop of analysts or that perfect Chief Data Scientist? That's where sourcers come into play. Focused on strategic activities, they look at what kind of talent is needed to meet specific business objectives. Then they go and find them. Adam Lawrence echoed Steckerl's concept of sourcing as an asset in a 2013 Dice blog: "One of the big measures for AMS is channel effectiveness. This will change from company to company and region to region. This enables sourcers to define return with constant analysis, review, and change. Sourcers need to constantly measure what is happening, be ready to make change, and target themselves to improve performance one step at a time." Their job is proactive networking and prospective candidate pipelining; becoming industry or functional experts in the players in the field that truly are an asset to the business. While sourcing provides a strong foundation for the strategic talent acquisition model of the future; it's one component in a much larger program. Recruiting may not be fully broken - but there's a long road to go before it reaches peak performance. Recruiters will still be needed as will more sophisticated employment marketers that don't just 'dabble' in employer branding and social recruiting, but truly understand the marketing life-cycle and components to "just in time" HR/Recruitment marketing: finding the right candidates, at the right time, in the right role for both the company... and the candidate.