The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc throughout all industries, including talent acquisition. Many business and human resource (HR) leaders had to adapt to the unexpected chaos of the coronavirus quickly. Nearly all recruitment operations went virtual.

However, despite the coronavirus chaos within the talent acquisition space, technology sparked a fast shift to new recruiting and hiring practices.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association (RPOA) explored this paradox of crisis and transformation during its inaugural virtual conference in October: Talent Acquisition Transformed Conference 2020. The conference gathered top thought leaders within the TA and technology space to discuss the pandemic's impact on talent acquisition and give messages of hope for the industry as we move into the future.

The conference opened with Ben Eubanks, author, speaker, researcher, and podcaster, giving an inspiring keynote speech. After the keynote, there were three sessions, each addressing different areas of talent acquisition transformation. Eleven TA industry leaders spoke on employer branding, remote work, fluctuating hiring demands, recruitment marketing, and the state of job seekers and employers in the era of COVID. The virtual conference ended joyously with Slash Coleman, founder of Laughter Yoga Richmond, providing the power of laughter to improve our health, energy, and attitude.

The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on employers and candidates requires RPO providers to pivot their business. Pivoting to a new strategy often entails drastically changing an entire organization. But in the case of unexpected crisis, pivoting has more to do with quickly changing course to adapt to outside, uncontrollable forces.

Andrew Brown began his career over 10 years ago supporting partners across MSP and RPO technology platforms as a value-added consultant delivering innovative technology. Today, as the Head of Partners and Alliances for Saba’s talent acquisition platform, he has observed a shift in the technology landscape driven by ever-changing recruitment demands. 

With the advent of modern recruiting technology there are tons of data at the disposal of organizations. Are organizations catching up to the data potential? What is the role of outside experts in bringing greater insight to an organization?

In 2016, John Younger, co-founder of the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association and an early RPO pioneer, suggested that recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) crossed the Chasm of the Adoption Curve and is climbing the Early Majority stage (accounting for 16 percent of the potential market) but is "nowhere near Main Stream yet." He also argued that as more and more companies try RPO, they will be "blown away with how much control they have and how much more elasticity it gives them in their recruiting and hiring functions."

The talent acquisition space has undergone a variety of challenges within the last few years. Many of these challenges were brought by rapid advances in technology. Others emerged from an economy on the rise, with jobs increasing and top talent becoming more fiercely contested.

The way companies recruit people has changed in the past few years. In the current candidate-driven job market, candidates have the power in the recruitment process.

A good illustration of this trend is that 95 percent of the people businesses want to hire for critical positions are not looking for a job. As a result, recruiting people has become more expensive and time-consuming for companies. Employers are competing for the best candidates who are treated as customers. This had made effective recruitment strategies all the more important.

It’s no secret that in today’s economy, with unemployment at a historic low of 4.3 percent, organizations are faced with the task of fighting tooth and nail for top level talent. Combine these unemployment levels with rapid changes to the way retail operates and turns a profit, and it’s easy to see why some are saying we live in an age of disruption.

Talent acquisition leaders have come to understand the growing importance of branding and recruitment marketing. As Staci Johnson, Vice President Marketing at Roth Staffing Companies noted, organizations need to continue to recruit existing employees with just as much effort as spent on recruiting external candidates. In this sense, both the candidates a business seeks and the existing employees they possess are customers.

When Lumina Foods decided to partner with an outside vendor on scaling up their hiring capabilities, they weren’t entirely sure what to expect. Mandy McPherson, Vice President, Human Resources at Lumina Foods knew from prior experience that recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) vendors  were often used by big businesses to fill high-volume recruiting needs, and thought that was the extent of their use.