It’s time for better hiring tools

COVID-19 pushed HR departments to the forefront of senior leadership’s mind.

With the ongoing war for talent – dubbed the ‘Great Resignation’ – talent acquisition (TA) teams are one section of HR that has become a strategic priority for businesses.

“More than ever, leaders need TA experiences that are efficient, effective, and engaging,” according to Talview’s survey of 150 talent decision makers in the US. The research was carried out in collaboration with Forrester Consulting.

The report continued: “Most decisions-makers have high ambitions for their TA practices, but nearly all report obstacles in bringing their vision to life”.

60% of the talent leaders told Talview and Forrester that they had access to inadequate candidate insights, which made it hard for them to improve talent decisions, candidate experience or the hiring process.

31% are struggling with a lack of timely candidate insights and 30% are grappling with low quality analytics about candidates.

As a result, one in four are making hiring decisions based on instinct, rather than data and analytics. This introduces bias and a lack of precision into the hiring process.

TA teams often rely on the job titles listed in CVs to figure out who to progress through the hiring process – while this data is easy to extract, recruiters are aware that it isn’t necessarily a good predictor of whether the candidate is the right fit for the job.

Instead, hiring teams want access to data and insights on candidates’ soft skills (65%), as well as personal attributes and abilities like motivation and flexibility (80%). 47% also want to be able to quickly discern job seekers’ technical skills.

TA teams need better tools

Central to why hiring teams are struggling is that “hiring tools are ill-equipped to adapt to new realities”, according to Talview.

Talview’s CEO Sanjoe Jose tells UNLEASH: “Some 80% of decision makers are focused on improving the quality and speed of hires but 60% say their candidate insights fall short to make unbiased talent decisions quickly and confidently.

“This could be due to the fact that companies rely on around five loosely connected talent acquisition tools, leading to data-related obstacles.”

52% of decision makers told Talview and Forrester they rely on between four and seven tools, which are not integrated with each other or other HR tech tools.

Talview’s research found that “decision makers who use six or more tools are at least twice as likely to say they face challenges with data or system silos, manual handoffs, and candidate insights that lack timeliness; this is compared to those that use three tools or less”.

It is no surprise, therefore, that modernizing tech tools is a top priority for 42% of the decision makers surveyed by Talview and Forrester.

TA teams want more intelligent tools that provide data and insights in real-time, as well as integrate with existing tech.

31% of the respondents told Talview they needed tools that integrated with each other, and 37% wanted hiring tools that integrate with collaboration tools the HR team uses.

In addition, 80% believe artificial intelligence (AI) will help here – 85% trust AI and 84% believe it will help scale TA processes.

36% also believe that AI can help reduce bias, and 32% think AI can help automate processes therefore addressing HR burnout and overwhelm.

Jose continued: “Effective…tools with AI-enabled features can quickly reduce manual work and hiring bias and improve remote hiring capabilities. But 55% have low confidence in their ability to take advantage of AI.

“That’s where talent measurement platforms can help unify the process from screening to interviews and orchestrate everything HR leaders need to reduce time to hire, increase the quality of hire, and lower cost.”

It is clear that better technology will help drive TA team success, which is ultimately essential to wider business outcomes.