The Firm’s Annual Report – what might 2024’s report say?

Here’s a sneak peek at just some of the key stats we’ve collated over the past few years:

Priorities don’t change…

We’ve seen ED&I, Candidate Experience and EVP and Employer Brand sharing the top 3 priority spots for 3 years now (in fact EVP and employer brand has never been out of the top 3) and they look set to share the leaderboard again in the 2024 priorities – if they’re not your focus areas, there’s still time to take part and influence the outcome!  

Interestingly, despite an increasingly challenging market, talent pooling has slipped out of the top 3 since the pandemic. In our recent Insight report exploring this topic, 73% said they did talent pool – but of those, none classed their organisation’s ability to effectively talent pool as very good. So, it’s interesting that it’s not classified as a bigger priority.  

Diversity and Inclusion (which this year becomes ED&I), started to emerge as a priority in the 2020 results – but the following year (post George Floyd’s murder and the widespread recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement) it jumped to the number 1 spot and stayed there the subsequent year too. Last year it slipped to second place, and with the results as they are, looks to retain that spot. Has it slipped because ED&I is no longer a priority, or because it’s now firmly embedded into company cultures and doesn’t need to be the key focus for TA teams?  

We introduced Candidate Experience as a priority option in 2020’s survey, and it flew straight to the top of the list and has stayed near the top since – its lowest placing was #3 last year. And it’s quite right that it should be a key priority to every TA professional – it weaves through every single part of the recruitment process after all.  

However, some priorities have changed…  

Data and metrics have sneaked up the rankings so far this year, currently sitting at #4 – last year it was #11, the year before it was #12 (although titled MI & Metrics), and it was #16 in 2021. So, it’s really leaped up the priority list this year – perhaps the biggest surprise, is that it hasn’t been a higher priority before.  

Perhaps the current challenges around hiring mean recruiters are finding it harder to hit those KPIs? Or perhaps with the tightening of belts, budgets need to go further and examining data means teams can use their pennies where they are most effective? Interestingly, at this point in the survey, 7% have reported that they don’t track time to offer (I suspect they track time to hire instead, but we know that the time between offer and hire is out of the recruiter’s control and therefore not the best metric). 18% aren’t tracking cost per hire.  

Lastly, Automation and AI – it’s not a surprise to see it creeping into the top 5 with the huge leap forward in availability and usage of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Bard. We all know it’s one to watch in the years to come. Certainly, there is far more to do as the early results from the current survey indicate that the vast majority of respondents are not using AI in their recruitment toolbox.  

(*For comparison, last year the options were slightly different, but “automation of the recruitment process” was #9 and “use of artificial intelligence-based tools” was #18.)

Every recruiter uses LinkedIn, right? 

Well actually, no, not quite. For the past two years, only 98% of respondents have said they use the platform for attracting, engaging and recruiting candidates – with its success seemingly decreasing (our 2022 report showed 83% found it the most effective social media tool, but last year, that number dropped to 79%).  

Despite that, 41% (2022 report) and 53% (2023 report) saw an increase of hires with LinkedIn as the candidate source. So, have recruiters come to expect too much of LinkedIn?
 

Measuring Success 

Both 2023 and 2022’s report showed that time to hire was the most popular metric used to measure success. 

Despite candidate experience being in the top three recruiter priorities for the last five years (and never out of the top five), only 2% more respondents measured it in last year’s results than in the previous year (2023 was up to 46%, compared to the 2022 result of 44%).  

Further to that, the 2022 report highlighted that a third of respondents felt their recruiters lacked candidate engagement skills. In 2023, that figure was up 3% to 36%.  

(It’s not just candidate engagement that recruiters could be better at either – 54% of respondents this year feel that is a recruiter capability gap, up a whopping 10% in the last 12 months.) 

So why aren’t businesses investing in their recruiters, or in effective candidate engagement training? Would recruiters with this improved skill be able to bring down their time to hire, and give a better candidate experience? Perhaps after two years or worsening results they have – we’ll have to wait to see what the 2024 report reveals!

Get involved and get your copy of the report 

Intrigued? We are too (every year!) – but we need your input to ensure we’re providing you, and the wider TA industry with as comprehensive data as possible – so grab a coffee and give us 15 minutes of your time to share your expertise .

In return you’ll receive a complimentary copy of our comprehensive report detailing key trends from the TA industry.