The impact & future of Talent Acquisition

Christian Dorfinger, Group Head of Talent, Erste Group

The most recent VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) times have had an enormous impact on talent market behavior. The “great resignation” and the “eternal war for talent” have been the major cause of the headache companies feel nowadays. So, what we see is that the top management of major companies put more and more focus on the Talent Acquisition capabilities within their organization. This increases the impact of this function; some even talk about a future Board position for talent process owners and others say it is about time.

Hardly any other HR discipline has more impact on the success of an organization. Let’s take 3 examples:

Culture – the future culture of an organization is strongly dependent on the competencies and behaviors of newcomers TA brings in. 

Brand Reputation – a poor or great candidate experience influences the perception of the brand enormously, honestly - would you like to buy a product from a company that never answered your application or treated you disrespectfully during an interview?

Cash Investment – TA decides on higher investments than most other departments, considering employees as an investment – here is the following simple math:

Average hirings per recruiter p.a.: 60

Average salary per hire p.a. (incl. labor cost): 100k

Average tenure per hired employee: 6 years

Total investment decision of a single recruiter p.a.: 60 x 100k x 6= 36m (!)

There are not many roles that decide on investments of 36 million per year – a “simple” recruiter does.

“The role of TA becomes a mix of Scientist and Artist, a number-cruncher and a match-maker, a psychologist and a salesperson, a tech-guru and a marketing pro”

Besides the growing impact of Talent Acquisition, the company’s TA owners also need to actively drive innovation. The good old times of post & pray (post a position & pray that somebody applies) are long gone – TA now needs to prepare for virtual hirings in the metaverse, decide on how much AI to allow in their (video-) interview processes not to fall in the non-diversity trap and communicate authentically their EVP through a massive number of social media channels for various target groups. Additionally, time-consuming active sourcing for candidates is not only a premium service of a TA function, it is a not enough valued basic endeavor.

On top of these permanently changing and mainly tech-driven innovation duties, the holy grail of TA excellence might be the UX (in this case CX - candidate experience). Convenience is the key. In every step of the hiring process. Come on, who wants to type in CV/resume credentials into an applicant tracking system and go through multiple face2face interviews? One-click, one chat, one go – that seems to be the new way of hiring, especially in the target group of GenZ.

Therefore, the role of TA becomes a mix of Scientist and Artist, a number-cruncher and a match-maker, a psychologist and a salesperson, a tech-guru and a marketing pro.

Considering the growing complexity of TA, one could say it is one of the toughest jobs not only in the HR industry. Adding the impact I would say TA is one of the most important jobs in any industry.