Global Online Survey Finds Talent Acquisition as Top Priority for HR Professionals

Human resource professionals around the world spend nearly one-third of their time recruiting new talent for their organizations, according to a recent online survey conducted by OvationMR.

According to The Conference Board, a member-driven think tank focused on global business insights, labor markets in most mature economies have been tight for the past several years. This would explain why job openings in many areas are difficult to fill and the resulting focus on talent acquisition for HR professionals.

source:aislelabs.com

Coming in at a distant second to recruitment was managing employee benefits with development of talent in third place. These three tasks made up 63 percent of how HR professionals spend their time.

Top Company Offerings

In order to attract the most talented employees, HR professionals reported that their organizations tended to offer strong benefits, vacation packages, and work-life balance perks.

source:hrnews.co.uk

These survey findings reflect comments from participants of the Forbes Human Resources Council. “We are shifting into an era where the ‘traditional’ office environment and compensation models are no longer as appealing as they used to be,” said Tiffany Servatius of Scott’s Marketplace. “Show candidates that you value work-life balance and individuality. Whether it is the option to work some days from home or allowing employees to move about an open office environment, give them some flexibility.”

Although mentorship, opportunities for advancement, and recognition offerings were relatively weak, more than half of the companies surveyed still viewed these offerings as very or rather strong.

Best Sources for Finding Talent

In our ultra-connected world, it probably comes as no surprise that online job boards came out on top as either the most important or very important as far as where HR professionals are finding their talent. The OvationMR survey found that LinkedIn and Indeed were, by far, the top online recruiting platforms. More than 70 percent of HR participants cited that they were either the most important or very important to their recruiting efforts.

Employee referrals ranked as the second most important venue for finding people, slightly above social networking. That shows that word-of-mouth and personal networks are still critical to obtaining top talent for companies as well as for employees looking for the best jobs.

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According to Philip Dana, Bridgepoint Education, and participant in the Forbes Human Resources Council, “Your business leaders and teammates can significantly impact your ability to attract top talent by creating talent ambassador LinkedIn profiles, reaching out to high potential candidates, taking time to conduct reviews on platforms such as Glassdoor and Indeed and helping generate content that is rich in the organization’s culture.”

HR resources professionals seem to say that their organizations are taking notice, with roughly two-thirds of respondents surveyed reporting that they offer bonuses for employee referrals.

Research Details

Two hundred online interviews with HR professionals were conducted in February 2019. All organizations had at least 50 full-time employees with half of respondents working at companies with more than 1,000 full-time staff.

source:hrexecutive.com

This survey was conducted using the OvationMR SME Business panel, which is curated from a diverse, invitation-based recruitment method. All respondents are pre-qualified based on known criteria for this particular survey.