Prepare for the new financial year by understanding what’s driving recruitment

As the financial year ends, businesses may be looking at 1 July with optimism and a chance for a fresh start. Understanding what’s driving recruitment can help to make this possible.

Founder and CEO of Arete Executive Richard Triggs believes that artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in hiring is actually a hindrance to business success, and organisations should limit their reliance.

“If an organisation said, ‘We’re going to buy this amazing software that’s going to enable us to be able to scan CVs, and pick out keywords, and hire people, and only bring people to interview who have got those keywords in their CVs.’ What happens if there’s an awesome candidate who would be unbelievably amazing in your business but didn’t write a very good CV?” Mr Triggs said.

There’s also room for unconscious bias in AI hiring, said Mr Triggs: “It unconsciously removes women, or removes people of colour.”

He continued: “There’s a lot of flaws with that technology. And, of course, if I want to hire you, I need to reach out to you, [and] we need to have a conversation. I need to understand your motivations. Why are you looking for a new job? What would a job ideal opportunity look like for you? What are your key achievements and transferable skills?”

“So, I think organisations, whether it be an in-house recruiter or third-party recruiter, will always have reliance on human beings. AI may be, to some degree, useful in disseminating and building out lists of people to be considered. But even then, I think there’s a lot of nuances that would be missed.”

Another key area businesses should consider is their own internal recruitment teams. Mr Triggs said that these teams often fly under the radar but should be held accountable as if they were an external recruiter.

“Employers need to start to manage the internal recruitment teams as they would a third-party provider. Other than saving money, what is the average length of time to hire? What is the opportunity cost from having this vacancy open for too long? What is the average length of tenure of the people that have been placed? They need to really analyse,” said Mr Triggs.

“Also, to have their leaders actively be encouraging of people approaching them directly about opportunities. Part of being a good leader is making sure that you’re constantly building a bench of talent so that you’re not left in a situation where you have a mission critical that you can’t fill.”

Contrary to what many in the workforce have been saying for the last year, Mr Triggs believes the Great Resignation is a myth.

“Personally, I don’t think it’s a real thing. In the recruitment market, or the job market at the moment is very buoyant. There’s a lot of opportunity. One of the reasons for that is that there were a lot of people who during COVID-19 wanted to leave their job and get a new job, but they chose not to because they felt it was too risky,” he outlined.

“What if I go to a new company, and I get COVID-19? What if I get a new company and that company is negatively impacted by COVID-19? So even though I want to change jobs, I’m going to remain in a safe harbour in a storm.”

“So, a lot of these people who would have normally left their job over that couple of year period didn’t and obviously, now that you know if it’s behind us, those people are moving. I don’t think that there is any great change in the market; it’s more that there’s been a bit of a bottleneck and that bottlenecks [have] been released.”