Here's How Technology Is Changing Talent Acquisition

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Sarah Landrum20
Our technology is advancing faster than ever. From Apple’s Siri to Amazon’s Alexa, artificial intelligence is becoming standard in our daily lives. Our technology is changing everything, from the workplace to home life. One industry facing significant changes due to technology is talent acquisition.
Automation and Artificial Intelligence
For years, recruiting has followed the same formula, where a recruiter finds a candidate for the employer. The recruiter serves as the middleman and central hub of information between the employer and the job candidate. Artificial intelligence is changing this formula by using its ability to make better analytical decisions.
Artificial intelligence can make decisions like figuring out whether a job description is male- or female-biased, how well it is written and what could be changed to make the description better.
Automation is another trend we’ve seen changing talent acquisition, and human resource departments are having to adapt to the new hire process. Automated systems have already begun to aggregate candidate data, giving the employer or talent acquisition specialist a list and seeking out the best candidates for open positions based on their experience and skills. 
Automation and artificial intelligence can learn on their own, build connections and draw on information to make conclusions. All of the following factors contribute to automation and AI’s usefulness in recruiting. 
Diversity in the Workplace
One of the key trends changing the landscape of the talent acquisition process is diversity hiring. In recent years, there has been a lot of importance placed on the recruitment and hiring of a diverse workforce — and HR departments are really recognizing the benefits of this kind of strategic talent acquisition, which include having employees with unique backgrounds, skills and ideas.
Industry surveys say diversity hiring is thought to be important by more than 67 percent of job seekers, along with the track record of the company or acquisition manager with regards to diversity hiring. About 57 percent of recruiters are beginning to make efforts to hire more diverse employees and improve the candidate experience by doing so.
A Focus on New Job Seekers
New college grads may have an advantage here — perhaps the days of having to have at least five years of experience are coming to an end.
Recruiters and human resource departments know that the best candidate is one with experience — however, we have seen the focus shift to attracting new people who are looking for jobs. Recruiters are also trying to give candidates who didn’t get the position a valuable experience. After all, if in the future another job becomes available, the applicants are more likely to reapply if they had a favorable interview experience with the company or looked forward to the onboard process.
An Increased Use of Online Tools
Online marketing tools are taking job advertisement to a whole new level. Technologies like having an online application form are crucial to advertising a job today, and any acquisition manager or talent acquisition team will tell you that. They’re also vital for conveying the employer's brand and attracting the top talent during the hire process.
Social Media Networks and Job Boards
The ability to use social media for sourcing candidates has revolutionized recruiters’ productivity. It is crucial for recruiters to know how to capitalize on the job social network giants like LinkedIn and even Facebook.
With most social networks and job boards, individuals create a profile to feature their job experience and personal data. Employers can also set up pages to display their brand and other information.
Candidates can then share relevant work and information with potential employers in addition to accessing features to help them with the job search and interview processes. Candidates and recruiters can easily message each other to get in contact to talk about open positions, possible recruitment or just about the company's talent acquisition process in general. They could also ask a question about an online job description they saw.
Job boards are stepping up to improve the customer and candidate experience. Many job boards have leveraged mobile functionality, including by allowing people to have their job board as an application on their phone.
Other social network market contenders include GitHub, Dribbble, Stack Overflow, Monster, CareerBuilder and The Ladders.
While technology is changing a lot about our everyday lives, talent acquisition will always be an essential part of hiring strategies. From the trends of diversity hiring to utilizing AI in any particular talent acquisition strategy, we have seen recruiters using everything they have to ensure both their employers and candidates are satisfied.
Understanding these concepts and where talent acquisition could be going is crucial for hiring companies and recruiters to make sure they can overcome any roadblocks and hire only the best, most strategic talent.