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What Hiring-Budget Decision-Makers Want to Know About New Trends and Tools

What Hiring-Budget Decision-Makers Want to Know About Hiring Trends and Tools

As a talent acquisition professional, you are probably a bit of a hiring trends nerd. When you hear about a new tool or trick, you immediately want to know more in hopes it helps your company find talent more efficiently. You research, and if it’s a good fit, approach your company leaders with a new hiring action plan.

And, if you’re like most hiring professionals, you get shot down.

It’s unfortunate, but leaders often stand in the way of hiring progress. Research for our report How to Make the Most of Your Hiring Budget revealed for 27% of hiring professionals, a lack of leadership buy-in is one of the biggest obstacles keeping companies from using the best trends and tools.

Your leaders do not want your team to fail. However, given the demands of their responsibilities, they don’t always have time to understand the intricacies of the recruiting and hiring process and, therefore, don’t know what you need to be more successful. It’s up to you to change their minds.

Here are four ways to get your company executives to believe in the latest hiring trends and tools:

Track the data to back your case

Hiring data helps you make better decisions about your talent acquisition processes. Knowing the ROI of your tools and your cost-per-hire shows how your company would benefit from new resources.

Yet, many talent acquisition pros don’t track this data or have access to this information if their company does track hiring budget metrics. Remarkably, in our previously mentioned report, 14% of respondents said they didn’t know the ROI of their hiring tools and 24% said they didn’t track cost-per-hire. Without that data, it’s difficult to make a case for new hiring trends and tools.

If you’re already tracking hiring metrics, make sure you break the data down to see hidden trends. Overall, your cost-per-hire might be good, but that may be because one department’s hiring managers are spending drastically less than another department. With this information, you can find what those hiring managers are doing differently and then propose a company-wide change.

Break down your hiring metrics in the following ways:

  • By departments
  • Monthly
  • Top hires and bad hires
  • By the position’s hierarchy in the organization

Tracking different hiring metrics enables you to prove whether making the change was the right decision as well as see when it’s time to move on to bigger and better tools. With data to back your hiring team’s progress, over time, your leaders will see definite improvements across the organization and trust your suggestions in the future.

Show the inefficiencies

Often, the biggest problem is company leaders don’t see where there are inefficiencies in the current process. Stephen Hart, CEO of Cardswitcher, admits when his HR manager first suggested they start using inbound recruiting, he was skeptical.

I think I was hesitant, initially, because I wasn’t completely convinced of the benefits of the process change,” he says. But after sitting down with his HR manager, he realized the current methods weren’t as effective as he thought.

The HR manager had identified a lot of areas where there were significant inefficiencies,” Hart explains. “They also showed me several academic journal articles and studies comparing the two approaches and their respective benefits and drawbacks. After thinking carefully about the evidence my employees provided, I decided to go for the change.

When you approach company executives, show them the cracks in the system so they understand why you are missing out on great talent. Then, explain how the new hiring trend or tool would address those specific issues without compromising other parts of the hiring process.

Explain the effects on morale

When you talk to leaders about hiring trends and tools, their focus is on potential employees. They don’t always think about how not having the right resources is negatively impacting the team they already have. But many hiring teams are struggling and it’s hurting overall morale.

In our previously mentioned report, 21% of talent acquisition professionals said if they received an increase to their hiring budget, they’d use it to hire someone else to help with hiring and recruiting responsibilities. Furthermore, 28% of respondents said their satisfaction with their hiring budget was tied to their stress levels and 25% said it was linked to how overwhelmed the rest of the team felt.

Your leaders care about the emotional state of their employees. But it’s not always clear how hiring trends and tools impact morale. Be sure to explain how the new resource or process will create positive change for current employees.

Tie the trend to company goals

Most leaders are goal-oriented. Before making any decisions, they need to know how a change will contribute to forward growth. For example, when Nate Masterson, the HR Manager for Maple Holistics, and his team of employees were looking to hire brand ambassadors, he didn’t understand why they wanted to advertise the positions in Facebook groups for distant cities.

I was hesitant about recruiting from these locations because I felt if people had to travel so far, they might not be as reliable or accessible,” he says. ”The team explained that the best way to get a diverse pool of applicants was to expand our search.

Once the decision was tied to their diversity and inclusion goals he understood the value it had. Make sure your leaders also see how a new strategy or tool will help accomplish a specific goal. This will open their minds and earn their support.

 

Josh Tolan

Josh Tolan is the Founder and CEO of Spark Hire, a video interviewing platform used by 6,000+ customers in over 100 countries.