As a part of the industry responsible for machine learning, AI, and the ‘cloud’, it’s not at all surprising that tech recruiters are early adopters. Back in the heyday of job boards and ‘post-’n-pray’, tech recruiters shifted their focus towards passive candidates. And now, as most companies practice passive sourcing in some shape or form, the most successful tech recruiters rely on intelligent tools to give them a competitive edge.
How do we know this to be true? We took a closer look at the responses from tech recruiters in the 2019 Recruiting Automation Trends Report to uncover how they are finding, attracting, and retaining top talent.
For tech recruiters in 2019, passive sourcing is the gold standard of candidate discovery -- 81% believe that they are finding higher quality candidates from passive sourcing than from inbound applications. What’s truly newsworthy here, however, is the finding that only 23.5 percent have the bandwidth to source for all of their roles.
It’s no wonder that when asked where recruiting automation would be most helpful, the majority of tech recruiters picked sourcing, or that 84% believe they would be more successful if they could automate their sourcing.
.png?width=3000&name=Copy%20of%20Highest%20Paying%20Recruiter%20Salaries%20of%202019%20(3).png)
This dilemma extends to candidate outreach as well. While a staggering 45% of tech recruiters believe email is the most important channel for outreach – compared to the cross-industry average of 38% – the majority are failing to measure key metrics of email performance.
A solid 64% of tech recruiters track email reply rates; but for open and click-through rates, there’s a huge drop-off (only 45% and 38% respectively). Reply rates may give recruiters an idea of their email performance in the big picture, but when attempting to cut through the noise of 50 other recruiting emails, you need to get more granular. The insight that the “silent” behaviors of opens and clicks provide is critical for a targeted, personalized outreach strategy.
.png?width=3000&name=Copy%20of%20Copy%20of%20Highest%20Paying%20Recruiter%20Salaries%20of%202019%20(1).png)
Another big focus for tech recruiters in 2019 is diversity & inclusion, with 84% selecting D&I as one of the most important trends shaping the future of recruiting and hiring. From using gender-neutral language throughout the hiring process to ensuring diversity within interview panels, there are a number of important ways in which tech companies are already bolstering D&I efforts.
More than any other industry surveyed, recruiters in tech view D&I as a prime candidate for AI – 61% believe recruiting automation can help reduce human bias in the recruiting process. At the moment, however, only 21% actually have these tools in place to help with D&I.
Across the board, tech recruiters see recruiting automation as the key to their success in 2019. Yet many still lack the data necessary to inform their recruiting strategy and will quickly be left behind by the talent teams that leverage intelligent tools to process this data for them. The verdict? To get a leg up in 2019, it’s time to revamp your tech stack.
Curious to discover the more of the leading recruiting trends of 2019?
