What’s changing in talent acquisition?

We launched our job board, CollegeRecruiter.com, 23 years ago in 1996 but have seen more embracement of technology and data to drive decisions by employers in the past two years than we did in the previous 21 years combined.

Our employer customers used to talk about how they were using data to make decisions, but what many (not all) were actually doing was using data to justify decisions. Now, many and perhaps most are actually using data to make their decisions. Two, tangible results of that:

1. Very few data-driven employers prefer to buy job postings on a traditional, duration-basis because they can see that performance-based postings are more effective, efficient, or both. By effective, I mean that they generate enough, quality candidates to allow the employer to meet its hiring objectives, whether they’re trying to hire one, 10, or 100 people through the posting.
2. Most data-driven employers are either using programmatic technology to distribute their jobs or their vendors are. Programmatic job ad distribution is largely killing the ability of media to sell postings based upon proxies like how many registered users they have, site traffic, and whether they purchased a Super Bowl ad. But it is also leading to problems with diversity and inclusion, as too many employers and vendors are looking at only the effective cost per application (eCPA) to determine where to run ads and not considering that certain audiences are just going to be more expensive to reach and that it is worthwhile spending that extra money in some but not all cases.