Thanks to demographic developments, the Western labour markets has decoupled from economic developments, and the demand for skilled workers for companies in this country remains at a high level. At first glance that sounds like a positive development. And yet it poses massive problems for companies, because significantly more employees are retiring than new talent is flowing in.
Automation and immigration won’t suffice
Efforts to offset the widespread shortage of skilled workers through automation or the immigration of skilled workers from abroad are, from today’s perspective, not sufficient to meet the respective demand in the long term. To be fair, one must say that demographers in the last ten to fifteen years have never painted a different picture. Companies must therefore hold themselves accountable for the lack of strategic foresight.
As a result of this development, employers today are exposed to competition that not only brings revenue shortfalls or additional costs for some companies but in the worst case may even jeopardise their existence. And so strategic talent acquisition is moving ever higher up the priority list.
Lack of professionalism in talent acquisition
Against this, however, stands the lack of professionalism in recruiting, which rarely does justice to the complexity and multi‑layered nature [of the task]. There is probably hardly a professional group which, due to the breadth of topics, demands so much and at the same time has so few criteria and standards. It already begins at entry level: even here there are no minimum requirements.
Recruiting newcomers often come from study fields such as business administration, business psychology, adult education, labor law or social sciences. Without a university degree it also works: a commercial vocational qualification or further training as a personnel officer, HR manager, recruiter or employer‑branding manager also allow entry.
This diversity results in the consequence that there are no fixed entry criteria for the job in recruiting that guarantee a minimum level of quality.
Reality in small and medium‑sized enterprises
Regardless of the training, the reality — especially in smaller organisations — usually looks like this: there is no explicit position for recruiting. Instead, if the HR area exists at all, it is set up rather generalistically. Then recruiting is part of a large bouquet of tasks such as personnel administration, personnel development, leadership development, onboarding and offboarding and much more.
In medium‑sized or larger companies it looks somewhat different: there the recruiting area is often seen as an entry position into HR; occasionally even inexperienced persons are placed in strategically important positions. That is fundamentally not reprehensible, but it mostly does not align with today’s demands on the role and the challenges companies face with regard to the shortage of labour.
The role set of talent acquisition specialists
Modern Talent Acquisition encompasses a wide range of tasks or roles and therefore requires a variety of interdisciplinary competencies. Thus recruiters or HR managers who are also responsible for recruiting frequently play the following roles:
- Change management
- Compliance
- Data analysis
- Data protection
- Event management
- Communication
- Graphic design
- Teaching and training
- Brand ambassador
- (Online) marketing
- Psychology and diagnostic assessment
- Relationship building
- Editorial work
- Research
- Sales management
- Social‑media management
- Strategic planning
- Thought leadership
- Trend research
Given such a variety of tasks it is quite advisable for talent acquisition teams to staff their vacant positions not only, but also with generalists and “all‑rounders” who then specialise in the tasks of recruiting. Strategic recruiting is indeed always successful when you recognise connections and consider them that go beyond the actual filling process.
Case study
Let us lock this down with a concrete example: When employees leave the company, the original task of recruiting is to fill the position. Much smarter, however, is to identify the causes and reasons why employees quit. Then preventive measures can be taken that reverse, minimise or even eliminate such developments. The prerequisite for that is analysing the downstream processes along the employee journey.
Also required are the internal competences and freedoms to place these points appropriately and initiate change. That may be easier for people with a generalist background than for specialised recruiters. But if recruiting takes on tasks like those described above, the actors should be able to do more than just fill positions. They should have a broad portfolio of other (HR‑) disciplines, for example leadership development or compensation & benefits.
However, placing HR generalists intentionally in recruiting is not to be confused with HR managers or even HR business partners covering talent acquisition alongside their main responsibilities. On the one hand this is a question of capacity and focus. Moreover, the know‑how of how things can be implemented effectively is simply missing.
Then lawyers design career websites, psychologists plan career events or payroll clerks formulate perfect job postings. It cannot be ruled out that this also works. However, this is not the rule.
What does successful recruiting need?
Successful recruiting is characterised by a high maturity level of the talent‑acquisition organisation. And this can only be achieved if all puzzle pieces fit together.
Concretely this means: What does the current tech stack in recruiting look like? How differentiated is the channel mix for the respective target groups? What competences does the //hiring teams bring for candidate selection? How effective and efficient is the current process workflow in recruiting? How satisfied are all parties (candidates, recruiters & hiring managers)? To answer all these questions optimally, absolute specialist knowledge is required — which generalists lack.
This is about, for example, introducing and implementing approaches of recruiting analytics, integrating active sourcing and candidate relationship, applying diagnostic assessment, identifying effective on‑ and offline channels and much more. So in order to be really successful in recruiting, it is necessary to consign the previous generalist approach to the archives.
More specialisation and focus are needed, because recruiting today — and above all tomorrow — is much more complex and multi‑layered than most believe.