One Year Later - Attracting Critical Talent in Today's Economy

Almost a year ago to this date, CLC Recruiting presented its work on “Attracting Critical Talent in Today’s Economy,” where we revealed five commonly-held labor market myths and the challenges and opportunities they present to recruiting professionals.

Generally speaking, hiring managers believe that we can fill critical positions faster, cheaper, and better. Given the abundance of talent looking for jobs, hiring managers think that it should be easy for recruiters to fill positions with highly qualified talent. CLC Recruiting took a look at whether this myth was a indeed a myth or reality and found that, while application volumes have increased considerably, we did not observe a commensurate increase in quality of slate and quality of hire from the perspective of hiring managers.

The question is, do these findings still hold one year later?

In a survey of recruiting executives, recruiting managers, and recruiters, CLC Recruiting found that the number of applications per requisition has increased by 128% from 2007 to 2010, but that 83% of recruiters believe fewer than half of those applicants meet the basic qualifications for those positions. Looking at quality of slate and quality of hire, we found that those metrics actually deteriorated from Q109 to Q110.

So what does this mean for Recruiting?

We need to continue to refine and rationalize our sourcing channels and increase transparency into the day-to-day experiences of the positions we’re attempting to fill. These tactics will enable us to target and attract the right quality candidates.

In addition, we need to look within, specifically at recruiter capabilities. Do recruiters have the right sets of skills and experiences to add strategic value to the business? As Donna Weiss mentioned earlier this week in the Recruiting Roundup, our upcoming research on “Building Next-Generation Recruiter Capabilities” will seek to answer this question. Stay tuned!