Talent Acquisition “Wrapped”

Artificial intelligence. Skills-Based Hiring. Doing More With Less.

These are just a few of the common themes we heard all throughout 2023.

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 Cara Brennan Allamano, CPO at Lattice; Tess Manderson, Global VP of Talent at Terminal.io; and Dustin Cann, Senior Director: People Process, Compliance, & Operations at Splunk to discuss the major HR/TA trends that were most impactful to their businesses in 2023 and any major lessons learned.

Check out the full 45-minute webinar below or read on for a brief synopsis of the 4 trends that were covered.

1.) Talent Landscape

We started the conversation with a recap on the overall talent landscape across our panelists’ businesses. As you can imagine, Cara, Tess, and Dustin all had a different perspective on what the overall talent landscape looked like for them. 

• Cara > 2023 at Lattice was really all about maturing as a business and implementing practices focused on efficiency and effectiveness. Why? To take them to a near future where they’ll be a sustainable public company. One of their biggest initiatives for the year was focusing on continuous feedback not just to ensure every employee felt connected to the business but to also make sure they had really strong measurable objectives. 
• Tess > Being in the tech recruiting side of things, Terminal saw a lot of heavy layoffs continue across the industry. The majority of their customers didn’t hire as many employees as they originally expected to, which meant that every hire was even more precious. So, they really focused on speeding up the hiring process and also saw a lot of contract hires due to some hesitation around FTE hiring. 
• Dustin > Similar to Terminal, Splunk is heavily focused on tech hiring, and Dustin mentioned that the market remains hyper-competitive. They’ve also seen an emphasis on the evolving AI talent space and understanding the skills and competencies required for these types of roles.
  
  

2.) AI

AI has truly been the buzzword of 2023 - not just in talent acquisition, but everywhere!

Cara shared a few AI-related stats from Lattice’s 2024 State of People Strategy Report. 76% of people functions are looking at AI in their practices and 38% of those folks are already using a tool that has an AI component. This just goes to show that people leaders are being pulled into the conversation around the use of AI at their organizations. If you’re not involved in the conversation yet, Cara mentioned that it appears you will be soon!

Dustin pointed out that the regulatory environment adds another layer to this, but we don’t really have the answers we need yet.

What’s most top of mind for Tess concerning AI is that they aren’t relying solely on AI to make decisions around candidates. Having recruiters who are experts in the industry is still going to be valued, and she believes there are a lot of ways to rely on AI without removing the human element.

3.) Skills-Based Hiring

Tess kicked off this trend by sharing a stat from Terminal’s annual survey that goes out to 1,200 global engineers (the full results will be coming out in January)...60% of candidates prefer take-home assessments vs. live assessments. Tess thinks this will start to even out in the future as live assessments speed up the hiring process and because take-home assessments tend to be a heavier lift for candidates.

Cara mentioned that the conversations around skills-based hiring are continuing because organizations know it’s best in class. This type of hiring is how you get to fair and equitable outcomes and the very best hire. Dustin also thinks it’ll be interesting to watch how AI can possibly help us translate the practical application of what a skill does vs. what is actually needed to be successful in the role.

4.) Location Strategy 

The biggest message that all the panelists shared related to this trend is the importance of hiring globally. This allows you to put energy into previously untapped talent. Dustin pointed out that the pandemic really showed us that organizations have the ability to operate just fine in a fully remote or hybrid environment, and he doesn’t see this changing.

When you look at this from a candidate perspective, most people are also content working in a fully remote or hybrid environment. In fact, in Terminal’s survey mentioned earlier, only 4% of respondents said they’d be open to going back to an office and 54% prefer working from home 100% of the time. There’s really been a shift here, and it’s important for organizations to embrace this shift within their hiring process.
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Thanks to Cara, Tess, and Dustin 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 what they’re most looking forward to in 2024.

And see you on January 16th for our first webinar of 2024. We’ll be joined by Hung Lee, Curator at Recruiting Brainfood who will be walking us through the 5 talent acquisition trends he believes will define 2024. We’ll see if any of today’s trends carry over into next year! You can register for that live conversation here.