HR.com’s Future of Talent Acquisition 2023-24

Create a strategically aligned talent acquisition function

Talent acquisition remains a high priority.

Despite numerous seismic shifts that have reshaped the landscape of human capital in recent years, one constant remains unwavering. The more things change, the more talent acquisition (TA) stays as the most critical function within the greater HR organization.
 

As per ‘HR.com’s Future of Talent Acquisition 2023' research report, TA remains a top priority for the vast majority of organizations.

Rumors of a bear market in recruitment have, so far, been greatly exaggerated, and recruiting remains a critical enterprise. Silicon Valley layoffs dominated the news earlier this year, but it turns out they were exceptions to the rule when looked at across all industries. Many organizations had just the opposite problem.

However, TA's battling a persistent mediocrity.

As per the report, there are only about 75 U.S. workers available for every 100 job openings in July 2023, though those numbers vary widely from state to state. Of course, the economy will always have an impact on talent acquisition, and that long-predicted recession may still strike.

But from what we can see right now, today’s labor shortages aren’t going away anytime soon.

Even if we didn’t have literal labor shortages, we would still have significant mismatches between the skills needed by today’s organizations and the skills available. This is especially true in the so-called area of soft skills and emotional intelligence. For better or worse, no machine in the world has the knack for being a people leader.

We need to go beyond the outdated war metaphor.

The “war for talent” metaphor is now over a quarter of a century old, and we think it has done little to no help in inspiring the TA function to address its many challenges. Too often, our profession still lacks consistent and repeatable results that can be tied back to specific
practices. And, we still have not made enough progress in perennial problems such as skills gaps.

Moreover, there’s no “winning” the “war for talent.” There’s only a never ceasing endeavor to hire and advance good people who can help your organization find the balance between being highly productive and highly attractive. Is there some idealism about TA here? Sure, but we think a little idealism is good for the soul, and it helps put our research findings in the right context.

Given below are the major findings from the research.

Many of Today’s TA Functions Struggle

Finding: Just one-fifth of organizations describe their TA functions as Advanced or World class

Respondents were asked to choose which state of development best describes the talent acquisition function in their organization. It turns out that many have work to do. Under a fifth describe their TA function as “Advanced” (11%) or “World class” (7%).

However, over a third describe the TA function in their organization as “Established.” This leaves a large portion (45%) of respondents in the lower three levels of this maturity model.

Competition Drives Talent Acquisition

Finding: Increased competition within market or industry influences the TA strategy and activities in over half of organizations

What influences an organization’s TA strategies or activities?

Organizations continue to grapple with increased competition within markets or industry (51%) along with the need to backfill existing positions (51%). These have remained the top two influencers of the TA function over the last year, based on our longitudinal data.

Retaining top talent also helps address these issues, so we believe that it’s important to establish an employer brand this strong both inside as well as outside the organization.

Prioritized TA Functions Have Better Capabilities

Finding: Over two-fifths say that TA is among their HR department’s top three priorities today

How important is TA relative to other HR-related issues? About one-fifth (17%) believe TA is the single most important talent-related priority in their organizations. A quarter (26%) say it is among the top three talent-related priorities and more than a quarter (29%) say it is at least within their top five talent-related priorities.

In other words, most (72%) view it as at least a top-five priority, and a whopping 94% view it as at least a top-ten issue. As we see later in the report, organizations that prioritize TA to a greater degree benefit from a more capable and strategically aligned TA function.