2024 Talent Acquisition "Wrapped"

Artificial Intelligence. Skills-Based Hiring. Data-Driven Decisions. 

These are just a few of the common themes we heard all throughout 2024.

But before we say goodbye to another monumental year, we brought Spotify's "Wrapped" list to talent acquisition. During our December webinar, we sat down with Scott Sell, VP of Talent Acquisition at Mercy; Andrea Lessard, VP of Talent Acquisition at Red Bull; and Ben Dickinson, VP of Talent Acquisition at ID.me to discuss the major HR/TA trends that were most impactful to their businesses in 2024 and any major lessons learned.

Check out the full 1-hour webinar below or read on for a brief synopsis of the 4 trends that were covered.
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We started the conversation with a poll on what trend was most top of mind for our audience this year. The results? A whopping 47% said AI with skills-based hiring coming in as the second most popular answer at 23%.

Talent Landscape

We felt it would be a great starting point to provide a recap of the overall talent landscape within our panelists' organizations. As expected, Ben, Andrea, and Scott each offered a unique perspective on what the talent landscape looked like for their respective businesses in 2024.

• Ben > In 2024, ID.me experienced significant growth, particularly within their tech and sales departments. A key focus was their location strategy, marked by the opening of a West Coast hub. With plans to double the size of their organization in the coming year, they’ve prioritized building out their recruiting team while simultaneously scaling their workforce.
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• Andrea > After many months of planning, Red Bull successfully launched a major organizational restructure. They opened 510 roles, with a strong emphasis on hiring internally wherever possible. Their priorities have centered on scaling operations, reducing bias, standardizing interviews, refining their location strategy, and driving internal mobility as a result of the restructuring.
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• Scott > Mercy is about six months into their fiscal year and is on track to make 20,000 hires. With 40,000 applications per month, their focus has been on leveraging AI to identify and secure the best talent efficiently. Additionally, with a shrinking healthcare workforce, internal mobility has become a top priority—ensuring employees have clear career paths within Mercy to retain talent and foster growth, rather than seeing them leave for opportunities elsewhere.
  
  

Artificial Intelligence

AI has truly been the buzzword of 2024 - not just in talent acquisition, but everywhere! So, how did our panelists use AI this year?

For Red Bull, they were focused on 2 things: an improved process with regards to interviewing (using Pillar) and how to get through a large volume of applications quicker, sometimes even 10,000 applications per role. Overall, their AI usage needed to fit in with their philosophy of enabling the TA team to do their job faster and better but not to do the job for them.

ID.me is leveraging AI across multiple areas of their hiring process: using ChatGPT to generate job descriptions, LinkedIn’s AI tools to help Hiring Managers craft outreach messages, and Pillar for automated note-taking and structured interview guides. They’re also exploring sourcing agents (though the functionality didn’t quite impress) and tools to analyze written application responses to detect if candidates used ChatGPT.

At Mercy, the goal is to leverage AI to handle tasks that are repetitive and monotonous, freeing up recruiters to focus on more impactful work where they can truly utilize their unique skills and talents.

Skills-Based Hiring

Ben’s biggest piece of advice for implementing skills-based hiring is to secure executive buy-in from the start. By aligning leadership, the focus shifts to how the approach benefits the organization, rather than feeling like another TA-driven initiative. For Red Bull, using interview guides to implement skills-based hiring has been a “no-brainer.” One of their biggest takeaways was the importance of scaling quickly while keeping the process simple, particularly when assessing candidates.

At Mercy, skills-based hiring begins with the job description. They’ve adopted a “less is more” approach, zeroing in on the core responsibilities of the role, how success will be measured, and ensuring those priorities are clearly reflected in the job description.

Location Strategy 

Here’s a quick overview of where each panelist’s organization stands on location strategy:

• ID.me made a major shift in 2024, transitioning from fully remote to fully in-office. As a growing company, the decision was largely driven by the need to foster a stronger in-office culture.
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• Mercy operates in a hybrid environment. While direct patient care roles require an on-site presence, many other positions allow for flexibility, as Mercy prioritizes securing top talent no matter where they’re located.
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• Red Bull follows a hybrid model with defined guidelines for remote work, in-office expectations, and home office environments.
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Internal Mobility 

At Red Bull, internal mobility goes beyond moving talent across global locations—it’s about nurturing existing talent and reducing the need to look externally for top candidates.

Mercy has placed significant emphasis on internal mobility, seeing it as a key driver for both retention and recruitment. By fostering growth and investing in their employees' development, they create an environment where people are not only encouraged to stay but are also drawn to join an organization that prioritizes their career progression.

ID.me is in the early stages of developing their internal mobility strategy. They've established several career paths and ladders, particularly for their non-exempt workforce, to transition into corporate roles. This approach not only allows the business to fill positions quickly but also brings highly skilled workers into open vacancies, driving greater efficiency and expertise within the company.
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And with that...we "wrapped" things up! Thanks to Ben, Andrea, & Scott for joining us! Don't forget to check out the entire webinar linked above to uncover even more of their thoughts concerning these 4 trends.

And see you on January 22nd for our first webinar of 2025. We’ll be doing things a little differently and will be joined by Mark Simpson, Pillar’s CEO & Founder. We’ll be pulling back the curtain to share a “behind-the-scenes” look at some of the most compelling trends and insights drawn from 100K conducted with Pillar. You can register for that live conversation here.