Recruitment Strategy Development

©2016 DoubleStar, Inc. www.doublestarinc.com 888-719-9311

RECRUITMENT STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT:

DETERMINING WHERE YOU ARE AND WHERE YOU NEED TO GO

White Paper

http://www.doublestarinc.com/

2 | ©2016 DoubleStar, Inc. www.doublestarinc.com 888-719-9311

TALENT IS ONCE AGAIN IN CHARGE…ARE YOU READY?

In a recent study on in-house recruiting, conducted by Hunt Scanlon Media, an

analysis was done on the changing landscape of talent acquisition. The study finds

that one of the leading trends for 2016 is the need for companies to redefine their

recruitment practices in order to drive significant internal recruitment initiatives,

while simultaneously scaling back the need for external recruiters and reducing

overall recruitment spendi.

With the increased availability and acceptance of social media channels,

digital/technology tools, and talent communities, companies have more resources

available to them than ever before to identify new pools of talent, optimize

candidate outreach, and very effectively replace external partners by assuming more

direct sourcing and recruiting work within their own teams.

As unemployment rates continue to decline from a 10-year high of 10+% in early 2010

to today’s rate of 4.9% (and heading lower), the demand for certain highly skilled

talent has surpassed the supply. A lower unemployment rate means the pressure for

finding the right talent is greater and the competition to fill jobs is tighter than ever.

This creates a power shift where talent now has the upper hand in the candidate-

scarce positions. Complicating matters is the generation gap and how they view

employment. While a Gen X employee tends to stay in a role an average of 5 years, a

Millennial will only stay an average of 2 years.

STRATEGY STARTS WITH UNDERSTANDING WHERE WE ARE AND WHERE WE WANT TO GO

Before rushing to build a solution, companies can benefits from asking and

answering some critical, fundamental questions:

1. How good are we today at attracting the talent we need?

2. How do we compare to our top competitors?

3. How good do we need to be at Talent Acquisition to meet our business goals?

4. Do we have the right resources, tools, and delivery models in place to meet the

evolving hiring demands we are being asked to fulfill?

5. How do our Hiring Managers feel about our recruitment capabilities and our ability

to deliver on their openings?

Successfully recruiting in a competitive marketplace requires a host of capabilities.

Some of those include targeted candidate identification and sourcing, effective

outreach, a skilled/knowledgeable staff, the right amount of time, sufficient funding,

and solid resource/marketing tools. In the face of mounting competitive pressure for



talent, and the changes in the way the upcoming workforce prefers to be engaged,

another critical question for all recruiting leaders to ask is “Are we armed with the

right tools, technologies, staff, and methods for operating in candidate-scarce

markets, or are we trying to attack this problem using the same approach we did

when candidates were more readily available?”

Many companies have a complex and comprehensive business strategy for the

overall business which includes strategies for marketing and sales, product

development, finance, and distribution/supply chain. It is part of the discipline of

running a business that those business strategies are continually updated annually or

semi-annually as business conditions change.

Unfortunately, we have seen very few examples of the same clear, comprehensive

strategy for talent. It is important that organizations create a talent strategy and

align it to the overarching business strategies, articulating the methodologies,

sources, and tactics that an organization will use to capture the talent it needs to

achieve its business goals.

THE FUNDMENTAL STRATEGY QUESTION:

WHAT TALENT DO WE NEED AND WHERE/HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET IT?

Often, part of the problem is that organization hasn’t conducted a sufficient

needs analysis of talent demands, leaving the HR/TA function in a completely reactive

mode, waiting for and responding to job openings. A better approach would be to

build a talent strategy that links to business objectives, determine hiring needs in

advance, understand the internal talent pool of existing associates, proactively build

talent pipelines, and develop the relationships with targeted talent communities that

are required when the business need creates the openings.

While it isn’t always possible to predict all the hiring needs, there are ways to identify

anticipated openings through year-over-year hiring trends, known changes in

business such as planned acquisitions, and business growth projections. Setting up

an effective recruitment strategy takes a lot of work and attention to detail.

Remember, to be the best, a recruiting organization needs to continually assess,

plan, and recalibrate its goals and its performance against the talent strategy.

Another component of Talent Strategy is deciding to what extent we should build,

buy, or borrow the talent we need. In most TA organizations, the focus and the

expertise is on building talent—which is limited to acquiring and developing direct

employees. But many, if not most companies, are increasingly buying or borrowing

the talent they need. It is far more effective for a TA function to drive the

development of these strategies, and be involved in executing all three, rather than



continuing to focus on the traditional approach of hiring new talent in traditional

employment relationships. It’s also important that companies understand to what

extent the talent exists within their existing associate pool and how to develop that

talent through career pathing and succession management.

HOW A FORMAL ASSESSMENT CAN HELP

It is important that TA function’s conduct a formal assessment of their capability to

deliver against business needs every 3 – 5 years or when a significant change happens

in the business (i.e. acquisitions or extreme growth). That period coincides with

business cycles, planning horizons, changes in the external marketplace, and changes

in the various technologies that support recruiting.

While the key elements of a formal assessment will inevitably vary based upon each

company’s specific situation, nearly all assessments will include some or all of these

key components:

1. Quantitative Description of the Current State

Are we able to show in clear numeric terms the key operational components of

our TA function, recent trends, likely future trends, and our key performance

measures?

2. Qualitative Description of the Current State

Do we know our teams’, our clients’, and our stakeholders’ perceptions of our

true strengths and weaknesses? Do we know what our hiring managers say

about us to their bosses and their peers?

3. Voice of the Customer Feedback

Do we have quantitative data about hiring manager satisfaction with our service

delivery in the key performance areas of TA? Do we know where we stand today

vs. where our clients would like us to be?

4. Analysis of KPIs and Metrics

Are we capturing and tracking the key performance metrics that helps us achieve

operational excellence? Do we share critical project status information with our

clients to help them understand our progress against objectives, marketplace

realities and trends, and their impact on recruiting and hiring performance?

5. Comparison of Metrics to Best Practice Models

Have we benchmarked our operation against external metrics to understand

what’s possible? Do we know what a best practice implementation looks like

and how we compare to the ideal?



6. Gap Analyses

Have we conducted a thorough Gap Analysis to know our weakest areas with the

biggest opportunities for improvements? Are we constantly monitoring our

lagging areas of performance to close those gaps and keep improving?

7. Key Change Initiatives Suggested by Assessment Findings

Are we always working on 3 – 7 improvements projects that will impact our

performance outcomes for our clients and stakeholders? Are we replacing

completed projects with new initiatives to assure continuous improvement?

8. Detailed Road Map for Implementing Changes

Have we sufficiently planned our change initiatives, including change

management, training, and partnering plans to assure adaption and impact?

9. Targets and Measures for Success

Do we set quarterly targets (quantitative and qualitative) for improvements? Are

we holding the right people responsible for the right results?

The best recruiting functions we’ve assessed are closely partnered with their

business leaders, and the talent strategy is closely aligned to the organization’s

strategic business plan. This helps Talent Acquisition/HR capture proper levels of

funding to support proactive recruiting, manageable workloads, and operational

efficiency.

DON’T FALL BEHIND

Surprisingly, many TA functions are operating behind the needs of the businesses

they support, caught in the trap of being under-resourced, underfunded, and low on

marketing budget. Additionally, falling behind often forces the TA leadership to turn

to costly external recruitment options, which can quickly inflate the budget and

spending, creating a gap in the talent strategy versus the overall business strategy.

In these cases, TA leaders struggle to meet the current recruiting needs of their

organizations, risk burning out their recruiters, and ultimately lose the war for the

best talent to more well-prepared, well-thought-out competitors.

A Recruitment Process Assessment can look at the recruitment strategy with an

objective point of view, analyze historic recruitment data/trends, and challenge the

organization to engage and think differently on how to win the war on talent.



Regardless of the direction you take to achieve the right talent strategy, as LinkedIn’s

global trend report reminds us, the most important element in all of this is

relationships…. “The relationships you have with your candidates, cross-functional

partners, and employees will pave the path to talent acquisition success.”ii

i In House Recruiting: Best Practices Redefining Talent Acquisition, Hunt Scanlon

iI Global Recruiting Trends 2016, LinkedIn

About DoubleStar

One of the nation’s leading consulting firms focused on helping clients solve their

toughest talent acquisition and talent optimization challenges, DoubleStar provides

industry-leading Talent Acquisition Solutions, Candidate Identification Services,

Talent Advisory Services, and Talent Technology Solutions.

Since our founding in 1993, we have served over 325+ clients including global and

national leaders. We have completed over 950 specialty and high-volume staffing

projects for clients across a wide variety of industries throughout the US.

We are a full service recruitment consulting firm that customizes our solutions to

meet our clients' unique hiring needs. We help our clients develop and implement

“best-practice” recruitment processes, train their managers, retool their recruiters,

and accurately measure the business impact of their workforce initiatives and

decisions.

We have served clients such as PepsiCo, Pfizer, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Actavis

Pharmaceuticals, QVC, GlaxoSmithKline, TD Bank, Aramark, University of

Pennsylvania Health System, Jefferson University Hospital, Celgene, Regeneron

Pharmaceuticals, Pacira Pharmaceuticals, Novo Nordisk, among many others.

DoubleStar, Inc.

1161 McDermott Drive, Suite 200

West Chester, PA 19380-4042

888.719.9311

Contact: Amber York, Managing Director, (678) 455-3963 for more information


Recruitment Strategy Development

Recruiting & HR

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