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Talent acquisition teams spend a significant amount of time trying to optimize the recruiting process. They may upgrade their career sites or start a talent newsletter in an attempt to reach more job seekers. They might invest in a platform or partner that handles reference checks or skills assessments. They could purchase a talent acquisition system to organize the flow of candidates.
Sometimes, these efforts are executed by the talent acquisition department at large, spearheaded by a talent leader or other executive. But more organizations are carving out a role — and sometimes a small team — dedicated to these and other initiatives, all aimed at optimizing the recruiting function. The role in question? Recruiting operations.
Recruiting operations is dedicated to advancing the hiring process. It’s a role focused on initiatives like process optimization, technology management and the candidate experience. Read on to discover the other components of the role, the benefits it brings and more.
Recruiting operations optimizes the process of talent acquisition. Recruiting operations is most often a role inhabited by a single person, but at larger organizations, it can also take the form of a small department. Regardless of how it takes shape, recruiting operations is a strategic function that oversees and improves the hiring process from end to end.
Now that you understand the basics behind recruiting operations, let’s consider the various components of the role.
Recruiting operations leaders are responsible for continually improving the talent acquisition process. This responsibility encompasses the various components of recruiting — candidate engagement, interviews, job offers. It also requires recruiting operations personnel to oversee and hone internal collaboration, ensuring all stakeholders are appropriately involved in the hiring process.
One of the most important jobs of recruiting operations is to oversee the technology and tools used by the talent acquisition team. Recruiting operations leaders will select and manage the platforms that position their team to find and win the best talent. They will also ensure secure integrations between platforms that make the talent team’s workflow more efficient.
Data analytics and reporting deeply inform recruiting operations. Because recruiting operations exists to oversee and improve an organization’s approach to talent acquisition, they rely on recruitment metrics, EEO reports and other sources of information for insight into whether their team is operating efficiently and fairly — and whether they’re making progress.
Lastly, recruiting operations focus on enhancing the candidate experience. This focus may manifest in attention to recruitment marketing or whittling down time to hire. However recruiting operations leaders choose to address the candidate experience, their work will be dedicated to creating better candidate relationships.
As recruiting operations leaders work to optimize the recruiting process, talent technology and the candidate experience, their work will leave a distinctly positive impact on the talent acquisition department.
Under the direction of recruiting operations, talent teams will see their hiring processes become more streamlined. Recruiting operations will resolve communication gaps and eliminate bottlenecks. Savvy leaders may even identify areas suitable for automation.
Efficiencies like these will translate to improvements in metrics like time to hire and cost per hire. Time to hire, for instance, measures a team’s ability to identify and advance qualified talent. When recruiting operations is focused on streamlining a candidate’s journey through the hiring process, time to hire and cost per hire shrink as a result.
The quality of hire metric indicates the first-year performance of a new hire. It may come as a surprise that recruiting operations can impact quality of hire, as the role isn’t typically involved in activities so granular as hiring decisions. The reality is that recruiting operations enhance quality of hire by giving talent teams the tools and resources to attract better candidates.
Data and analytics are essential to recruiting operations, as they provide insight into talent acquisition’s current state and its progress toward future goals.
There are dozens of recruiting metrics that provide helpful insights into how a talent acquisition is functioning. Here are five to consider:
The applicant tracking system is the main tool for reporting on recruiting metrics. An ATS that offers robust recruiting and reporting capabilities positions recruiting operations to measure the performance and progress of their talent department.
Data from metrics like these equips recruiting operations to make data-driven decisions. For instance, recruiting operations may need to decide how to allocate talent’s budget for the upcoming year. Metrics reveal the areas that could benefit from investment.
Perhaps an organization’s career site visit-to-application rate is low. This metric shows recruiting operations that they need to funnel some resources toward outfitting their career sites with engaging videos, informative posts and helpful resources.
Recruiting operations is an important job, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy one. Below, we describe some common challenges recruiting operations leaders face.
Recruiting operations leaders are bound to introduce change into the recruiting process. Leaders should follow best practices for change management, being careful to explain why a change is necessary in language that speaks to stakeholders.
An essential part of recruiting operations is connecting platforms to improve workflows. It’s a task that’s easier said than done. Integrations can create a multitude of issues ranging from irritating headaches to all-out emergencies. Recruiting operations can avoid the biggest problems by prioritizing data security, especially as AI comes to the forefront.
Recruiting operations is a function dedicated to efficiency. At the same time, however, one of its chief priorities is the candidate experience. While greater efficiency often improves the candidate experience — what candidate wants to wait three weeks for a hiring decision? —it can also detract from it. Candidates should be able to learn about a role, investigate whether it’s right for them and get to know both recruiters and hiring managers. It’s up to recruiting operations to provide job seekers that bandwidth.
Recruiting operations leaders need to stay up-to-date on current talent trends, especially as they prepare to lead their teams into the next era of recruiting.
Talent teams that leverage AI and automation can create positive impacts within and without their organizations. Here are two ways these new technologies are improving talent acquisition:
Recruiting operation leaders leverage data to make predictive talent decisions. Tools can predict a candidate’s likelihood of turnover, recommend applicants based on their skills and, most importantly, give clear descriptions of recommendation logic.
Recruiting operations may seem like an in-person role, given how ingrained the function is with the talent team. But today’s tools allow recruiting operations to be performed remotely. With platforms that give recruiting operations insight into the talent team’s day-to-day activities and overarching progress, recruiting operations leaders can operate from afar.
Recruiting operations is a role dedicated to the continual improvement of talent acquisition. It’s necessary, then, to define the talent department’s future state — what it should look like and how it should operate in six months, one year, five years. To progress toward that future state, recruiting operations should continually evaluate the department’s current state. A firm, data-driven grasp on how talent currently functions will show recruiting operations leaders where they are now and where they need to go next.
The successful recruiting operations leader never operates alone. In each of the best practices below, we highlight how recruiting operations can partner with talent team members, fellow leaders and hiring managers to achieve success.
Recruiting operations should work with their talent teams to design standardized processes throughout the hiring timeline. For instance, when a candidate applies to the organization, their application should initiate a string of interactions that occur with all candidates.
Recruiting operations should hold regular check-ins to assess their strategic progress. Leaders can use data, metrics and KPIs to measure how far they’ve come toward their goals. Ideally, these assessments will occur on a quarterly basis.
Talent acquisition is a highly collaborative function. Recruiting operations can support this collaboration by building relationships with hiring managers across the organization. These relationships allow recruiters to understand hiring managers’ goals and pain points more thoroughly.
Recruiting operations is dedicated to the optimization of the hiring process. But the role doesn’t improve hiring operations alone. In the end, the work of recruiting operations results in better, more successful hires.