A Blueprint for Modern Talent Acquisition

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A Blueprint for 
Modern Talent Acquisition
A Take the Interview White Paper by Bill Boorman
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2014 © Take the Interview

Talent acquisition used to be a simple process. People looked for careers, and companies looked for
people who would sign up and stick around for several years. There was not much movement and
when you needed an employee, you placed an ad in a paper, waited for people to apply, interviewed
the best applicants and hired them. The numbers of applicants were manageable and the process was
straightforward, passing from personnel to the hiring manager. Interviewing and hiring was local,
people searched for jobs geographically and wanted a local job for life.
The Internet, in its commercialized state, was launched 25 years ago and things changed. Businesses
shifted from local to national to global. The Internet provided a gateway to new opportunities, and the
proliferation of social media meant people were able to connect in a way that they never had before.
This brought choice and competition. The number of applicants grew as companies moved from
posting jobs on bulletin boards to posting on job boards to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other
social media sites. The significant growth in applicants via e-mail meant recruiters needed to
introduce dedicated recruiting technology to deal with the volume, providing a barrier between the
company and the applicants until they were identified as being a fit.
Before the growth of LinkedIn and other social media sites, when a candidate wanted a job they
needed to provide data in the form of a resume; it was the only way we could learn about an
individual’s background. Data had to be submitted because there was nowhere else to find it. When
recruiting moved from offline to online, companies moved their process online, but this still required
the completion of forms, the submission of resumes and the answering of questions. While it moved
to an electronic format, the process that applied to talent acquisition did not really change much even
as the outside world continues to do so.
The global recession had an intense impact on many companies and people around the world.
Attitudes and expectations changed and the significant adoption of Smartphone technology meant
that people were permanently connected. In 2014, more data is being created in one day than in a
year only five years ago.

The “war for talent,” first used in a report by McKinsey & Company in 1997, has been intensified by
demographic shifts primarily in the United States and Europe. This is characterized by an increase in
demand along with a decrease in supply. There are simply fewer post-baby boom workers to replace
the baby boom retirement in the U.S. and Europe. Although this is not the case in most of East Asia,
Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Central America, South America, or the Middle East, Eastern Europe
also tends to have similar demographics, namely an aging and/ or shrinking labor force. The war for
talent is compounded by the shifting types of work, with a concentration of knowledge workers with
new skills constantly in demand.

Employers recognize that their success is dependent on the people that they hire and the talent
acquisition process is central to getting the right people into the business. If we accept that there is a
war for talent and that competition for the best talent has never been greater than before, it would be
fair to say that the way in which many companies go about attracting and hiring talent means they
2A Blueprint for Modern Talent Acquisition
take the
interviewWhite Paper

simply lose out. Some companies are injecting innovation to
their talent acquisition functions and are driving change within
their organizations. Companies can modernize and hire the best
talent.

The Six Phases of Talent Acquisition
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Branding
Branding is the phase that connects candidates to employers
and people to connect with and follow. Sourcing is the phase
that converts candidates to applicants for specific roles. The
objective of the branding phase is twofold:
• Candidate attraction
• Company culture visibility
Demonstrating a company’s values helps candidates determine
whether to opt in or opt out of the application process. Smart
companies are fostering this by thinking of job descriptions as
content rather than advertisements, with content and
connections being provided by existing employees.
Defining
Candidates &
Applicants
Candidates include anyone
choosing to connect with the
company, for example, by
following a LinkedIn company
page or becoming a fan of the
company’s Facebook careers page.
Candidates need to be nurtured
with content, updates and the
opportunity to engage. The
challenge is that this creates data
silos in different channels, which
makes data mining to identify
potential applicants for targeted
content and job distribution
complicated. To counter this, some
organizations point all of their
social media towards their career
site as the only route to applying.
This means that while candidates
might be spread across multiple
locations, all of the applicant data
ends up in one place. The
downside of this approach is that
not all candidates are ready to
become applicants, match any
open positions or are ready to
apply. Another way to overcome
this issue is to adopt a talent
network approach to candidates
which will be explained in more
detail later in the paper.
Applicants include anyone
applying for a specific job. While a
candidate remains a candidate as
long as they choose to, an
applicant will either progress to
becoming an employee or be
rejected as an applicant and revert
back to candidate status. The
hiring pipeline is the process and
the steps involved are when a
candidate asks to be matched
against a specific job and gets
hired or rejected.
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Branding
Candidate Screening
Sourcing
Applying
Assessments &
Interviewing
Hiring/On-boarding

The branding phase is about providing enough content and connection points to enable people to
connect and discover what life at the company is like. Some organizations have set up a recruitment
marketing function within talent acquisition by hiring specialists or by hiring external consultants,
while others have placed the responsibility with the recruiters. This approach is flawed with recruiter
workloads, skill level and other priorities as barriers for generating content. Candidate research
conducted by the developer community, Stack Overflow, also shows that people want to connect and
get content from their peer group and only want to communicate with people in the same profession.
Programmers want to talk to programmers. Developers want to talk to developers. Accountants want
to talk to accountants. They don’t want to find out about life at work from recruiters.
The solution to this is to take a “brand advocate” approach by creating social destinations such as
LinkedIn company pages, Facebook career pages, Twitter accounts and Google+ pages, in addition to
their career sites. On these social networks, employees can share their stories, updates and images.
Oftentimes employees are told that they cannot speak on behalf of the company without first
obtaining permission; this can be a major barrier for effectively communicating brand to candidates.
High level permission with clear guidelines in place removes fear and helps generate content.
Our research shows that the average hire is connected and follows an employer for a minimum of
seven months before applying for a position there. There is a significant difference between the path
taken by hires and by applicants who are looking to find out if they are a fit during the hiring process.
Of the companies we tracked in researching this paper, 81-percent fell in to the former category.
Companies that have adopted a brand advocate approach to creating social destinations, and those
that have enabled employees to generate relevant content, attract connections and people begin
following the company.
In today’s hyper-connected recruiting reality, recruiters are becoming overloaded with unqualified
and unsuitable applicants who apply for jobs with limited information. They are moving straight from
a link, ad or update to the ATS (applicant tracking system) and applying. Research by Talent Board,
founding organization behind the Candidate Experience Awards, (#CandEs, @thecandes), shows that
the average number of applicants per open position is 205, with 95 percent considered unsuitable and
unqualified.
Some organizations have decided to be much more open in their branding to show the good and the
bad of the organization in an authentic way to help unsuitable candidates self-select out of the process
and reduce the number of poor fit applicants. This approach is often termed Culture Branding, which
was made popular by companies such as Rackspace through their culture site, www.rackertalent.com.
When Barclays Bank introduced this strategy for their Future Leaders program, the results showed
the impact of culture branding. They achieved this by introducing a social hub to their career site with
unscripted content and a good dose of honesty.
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Andy Hyatt, digital director at Bernard Hodes U.K. made the following comments on The Recruiting
Unblog after the launch of the site:
“Overall, the campaign has performed well, attracting just over 355,000 visitors to the
site since it was re-launched in September – an increase of 51% over last year, who
viewed over 1.6 million pages – an increase of 75%. And this without an increase in
advertising budget.
The visitors that interact with The Hub, have also proven to be more engaged with the
site – proving that social content can attract and retain visitors over paid advertising:
they are more likely to stay after viewing the first page (15.9% bounce rate vs. 25.8%),
stay for longer on the site (9’ vs. 3’51”), and view, on average, twice as many pages per
visit (10.05 vs. 5.01).
Visits to the site have increased by 51%, applications have decreased 
by 40% over last year. At first this might seem worrying if not for the fact that the
conversion rate between assessment and hire increased by 55%. Ultimate proof that
targeted and relevant content can deliver better quality candidates who are also more
likely to get hired.”
The site was launched at the end of 2011 and it shows the impact of social branding and connecting
potential applicants with internal employees. The strategy adopted by organizations in their branding
and recruitment marketing in 2014 should be to reduce applications, not increase their numbers, and
target talent that is right for the organization and open position.
Talent Communities and Networks
Another solution is to remove the traditional apply process all together and invite people to become
candidates of an organization rather than applicants for a job. It is possible to use the available data
to only make jobs visible to candidates when they fit the minimum requirements, inviting them to
become applicants for that specific job. This will significantly reduce the volume of applicants not
candidates, giving recruiters more time to concentrate on candidate experience and enhancing the
relationship with those who are qualified for specific roles.
The BP experienced hires team in London introduced a “Candidate Center” in 2013, with a unique
login for each applicant, as an integral part of their careers site, enabling applicants to get access to
specific content as they progress through the hiring pipeline including job and department related
content, timetables and next steps. This provides high-touch candidate care and is proving to be a
deciding factor when applicants have a choice between offers. It has also had a big impact on their
applicant net promoter score, which indicates how likely an applicant is to recommend the employer
to someone else. More importantly though, the applicant has enough information to be certain that
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they are potentially joining the right employer for
them, thus improving the quality of hire. The
practice of providing access to tailored content,
specific timelines, feedback and next steps should
be considered best practice and BP’s Candidate
Center is an excellent example.
Sourcing
Sourcing is the process of converting candidates
into applicants, and is the entry point of the
hiring funnel. Sourcing can be both inbound and
outbound. Inbound sourcing is the generation of
applicants who have responded to a job
advertisement and expressed interest in specific
roles. This may be as a result of advertising, job
sharing, referrals, mailing and similar
approaches. The objective is to attract applicants
or to convert candidates into applicants.
According to 2013 research conducted by
CareerXroads, the top source of hire was via
internal means (42 percent), which highlights the
importance of internal mobility as a sourcing
strategy. The question is: who takes responsibility
for internal mobility and who has responsibility
for communicating opportunity throughout the
organization? This is typically seen as a task for
HR, with communication being executed via a
company’s intranet. It can also be via a similar
posting or may rely on employees checking or
requesting opportunities with the exception of
intra-department promotions or company
redeployment. In terms of the hierarchy, all new
opportunities should be first matched against
internal employees, followed by ex-employees
(good exits), candidates found via external
sourcing methods and finally, job distribution
coming as a last step.
Talent Communities vs.
Talent Networks: How they
Differ
A Talent Community is a group that enables 360-
degree communication between every member, as
such, candidates can talk to other candidates, as
well as recruiters and company employees. The
limitations of this approach are that job seeking is
not typically a public community activity, and few
companies are interesting enough to retain
members when they are not actively looking for a
job. The community is most sustainable when its
main purpose is not hiring and the topic is broad
enough to enable engagement between members.
The benefit of a talent community is that
recruiters have access to member data for
sourcing and employees have the opportunity to
connect with potential applicants for branding.
Applicants include anyone applying for a specific
job. While a candidate remains a candidate as long
as they choose to, an applicant will either progress
to becoming an employee or be rejected as an
applicant and revert back to candidate status. The
hiring pipeline is the process and the steps
involved are when a candidate asks to be matched
against a specific job and gets hired or rejected.
A Talent Network enables candidates to connect
with companies without the need for 360-degree
communication between members. Sign up for the
talent network needs to be as simple and quick as
possible – preferably one click via a social sign in –
with links on all jobs, career sites, social places and
accounts. The talent network allows the recruiting
team to share targeted and relevant content,
updates and opportunities. The key to this is using
the member data provided by the candidate and
accumulated from other public places such as
LinkedIn profiles. The talent network data is kept
within the CRM and members are classified as
candidates. The purpose of the talent network is to
enable people to connect with the organization as
candidates, keep up to date with relevant content
about the employer and become applicants when
their profile matches a job opportunity and they
choose to apply.
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One organization making great inroads in this area is Sodexo USA, which includes internal mobility
in the responsibilities of the talent acquisition team. Sodexo achieves this goal by viewing all
employees as candidates of the organization and allowing recruiters to directly approach employees.
Additionally, the company enables employees to benchmark themselves against colleagues and
provides mentoring, support and development resources to enhance employees’ skills and knowledge.
Interestingly, internal applicants and hires increased significantly when Sodexo introduced their
mobile application. Internal applicants outnumber external applicants and hires by 4 to 1 and an
internal referral program also enables employees to refer colleagues for internal opportunities.
Sodexo is in the facilities industry and many of its employees are based away from a desk and a
computer. By giving the talent acquisition team responsibility for internal mobility and by retaining
employee data within the candidate relationship management (CRM) system, Sodexo was able to be
successful.
According to CareerXroads’ research, the second highest source of hire, at 24.5 percent, is referrals.
This is considered to be inbound sourcing because applicants respond to an invitation to become an
applicant from an internal employee. The report notes that 10 percent of referrals result in a hire,
which demonstrates the reason that many hiring organizations place referrals as a top priority for
their talent acquisition strategy. Employee referral networks are expected to significantly increase
their return on investment given that their reach is significantly increased as a result of social media.
Successful companies incorporate social referrals. This differs from the traditional referral, which was
in essence a recommendation.
Employers are also combining brand advocacy with referral networks as a single initiative rather than
a series of short lived projects, where the focus switches from month to month. The person
coordinating recruitment marketing should also take responsibility for the referral network, and
success should be measured by employee participation, candidates and applicants generated and
ultimately the number of hires.
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MARKETING AND RECRUITING – IT JUST MAKES SENSE
There is a school of thought and a growing number of companies that have integrated branding,
referrals and recruitment marketing in to their marketing function. This is because marketing has
already implemented many of the practices needed to be successful and owns responsibility for the
technology to make it work. It makes sense to integrate talent acquisition throughout the business
with each aspect of the business taking responsibility for their own area of expertise, with the
recruiters taking the role of project manager to facilitate and coordinate all of the aspects that
make these projects work.

Besides referrals, career sites are also an important source of hire with 23.4 percent of hires coming
from these sites according to CareerXroads Source of Hire Report. This is not surprising given that
the career site is seen as the usual destination for searching jobs at a company and applying. Only 35
percent of companies enable applying on other destinations such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Instead,
they typically direct potential applicants to the ATS.
There are several problems when trying to identify ROI and activity from social media channels.
Source of hire is often reported as the last place the applicant clicked before entering data into the
ATS or is captured via a drop down menu, which gives candidates the choice to select where they
heard about the opportunity. This tends to be the last online site the applicant visited. While this may
be useful as a source of application, it is important to understand the entire applicant journey and the
source of influence. This will provide you with a much better picture of the effectiveness of branding
and other talent acquisition activity. One solution to this problem is to track candidates and
applicants and their connection points with the organization, such as following a LinkedIn page,
Twitter account, commenting or subscribing to a career blog or other online career space.
As a source of hire, job boards brought in 18.1 percent of candidates that were hired at organizations.
Despite rumors to the contrary, job boards are far from dead and still remain an important feature of
talent attraction strategy. What is unclear is the way in which job boards are being used to attract
talent. Companies report that they are placing greater importance on the resume database as a means
of identifying active candidates over traditional advertising. A recent development within the job
board sector has seen Dice acquire TheSocialCV and Monster acquire TalentBin. These people
aggregators combine external data such as Twitter feeds, Stack Overflow reputation scores, and more
with the internal resme database. This keeps data current and real time, as opposed to being static.
This job seeker data and may, at some point, become accessible and valuable to their customers.
One source of hire that is being underutilized is re-hires. Although some organizations are benefiting
from taking a more proactive approach to re-hires, they are often referred to as boomerang hires.
Sodexo has a dedicated community online for “leavers.” They will notify this community of
opportunities that match their skills, run events for ex-employees and announce “returners” by
having them share their story. In 2013, 19 percent of Sodexo’s management hires included
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According to CareerXroads, career sites increased by more than 100
between 2012 and 2013, reﬂecting an increased investment by
organizations. The report also indicated that social media impacted 7 of the
11 sources of hire and the career site inﬂuenced nine out of 11.

“returners.” There are real advantages to this approach because the candidate knows the culture and
environment and it eliminates this risk which is often associated with new hires.
Talent Mapping
As more emphasis is being placed on building relationships with potential employees, sourcing as a
discipline has gone beyond filling jobs. One practice that is growing in popularity is talent mapping.
The availability of structured and unstructured data makes the identification and profiling of people
much more realistic today. Sourcers or external consultancies are increasingly building talent maps of
potential employees. These could be divided by job role, employers, skills, discipline or similar
divisions. Building talent maps allows sourcers to build relationships in order to convert leads into
candidates, connecting qualified people with the organization ahead of future opportunities.
Employers tend to organize data in the CRM by: Employees, Ex-employees, Candidates and Leads. By
tracking the level of relationship between the individual and the organization, sourcers can provide
hiring managers with a realistic time-to-fill following consultation with the hiring manager.
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The Hiring Funnel
The starting point of the hiring funnel is the introduction of the requisition by the hiring manager.
This commences the “project” of hiring. While the model that follows represents a common hiring
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funnel, steps can vary from organization to organization. The current mission is to automate as much
of the administration as possible, and to improve the quality of applicants progressing through the
use of profiling, matching and the increased use of assessments including background checks at entry
to the hiring pipeline.
• The hiring manager introduces requisition with appropriate authority
• The recruiter agrees on the job description and sets a deadline based on CRM data. This is dictated
by the level of relationship and the need to step outside of the CRM to generate new applicants.
• Organizations, such as Sears, have benefited from drawing up job descriptions and sourcing
plans based on HR data at this stage. Top performers are identified from data held within the
performance management system in order to draft the job description, with additional data
coming from development systems, profiles and resumes. Connecting existing HR data gives a
far more accurate job description and sourcing plan and provides a data-driven argument for
influencing hiring managers.
• The sourcer identifies potential applicants from the CRM and new leads through internet research.
They may approach candidates and then produce a long list of qualified applicants following these
approaches to determine status.
• The recruiter then screens the long list of applicants based on knowledge, skill and fit assessments.
The tests used are dictated by role and are often followed by telephone screening. The telephone
screen and/or video screening.
• The hiring manager then selects the shortlist from screened applicants based on resume and
scores, reviews responses and then elects to leverage telephone or video screening.
Video screening offers a more in-depth and often more convenient
alternative to phone interview. The usual format is three to ﬁve pre-
recorded questions with timed answers from the candidate. Most
commonly recruiters elect to employ a one-take approach to recreate the
live interview format, while others allow applicants multiple takes.
The real beneﬁt of using video for screening in place of the telephone
interview is logistics because the candidate records their response in their
own time and the results can be shared instantly or compared, without the
need to coordinate time with the hiring manager. The recruiter and the
applicant also do not need to be available for the call at the same time.
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• The recruitment admin coordinates the hiring manager and candidate interviews. Increasingly the
administrative tasks of recruiting are being delivered via a self-service model where the hiring
manager lists their availability and the applicant books the next step via an online portal such as
BP’s Candidate Center. This can also be applied to tests, screens and background checks. The other
route employed by organizations, such as Oracle and KPMG, is via a dedicated recruitment admin
team that frees the recruiters to concentrate on qualifying the long list to a short list and build
applicant relationships. Employers are automating as much of the hiring administration and
logistics as possible to improve efficiency, give control to the applicant (within the confines of the
agreed time frames) and to free recruiter time for more strategic work.
• The hiring manager conducts final interviews and extends an offer.
• The HR department coordinates offer letters, starter details, onboarding efforts, and any additional
next steps.
The hiring pipeline can also follow a different path according to the source of application. Where
applicants are internal or potential returners, there are fewer steps like assessment tests or
background checks, and the route to hire will be quicker. Additionally, some steps may be omitted for
reapplying applicants.
Candidate Screening
Organizations are expanding their screening process to include interview as well as assessments,
profiling and testing as a means of gauging applicant fit and suitability, and technology providers are
now offering solutions that help remove subjectivity to the interview process through greater
collaboration, standardization and results measurement. This provides a data-based argument for
selection based on evidence. As a result, the role of the recruiter is evolving.
Employers tend to organize data in the CRM by: Employees, Ex-employees, Candidates and Leads. By
tracking the level of relationship between the individual and the organization, sourcers can provide
hiring managers with a realistic time-to-fill following consultation with the hiring manager.
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There has been a notable shift of responsibility and accountability for hiring
away from the talent acquisition team to respective hiring managers. It is
increasingly common to see hiring manager key performance indicators
(KPIs) include time-to-hire, quality of hire and candidate experience.

The role of the recruiter in the hiring funnel is to generate the short list from a sourcer’s long list after
qualification and screening. As the assessment process is becoming increasingly automated,
recruiters are falling in to three different categories:
1. Super Recruiters
These individuals have less responsibility for day-to-day hiring tasks, with responsibility for
strategy, branding and direction. In his recent e-book, “Standing out and attracting top talent,”
Stack Overflow founder, Joel Spolsky, makes an important case for a head of talent acquisition
who has a more strategic and influential role within the business, closely aligned to the C-suite,
with less responsibility for the day-to-day hiring. If talent is viewed as the critical factor in
business success, then talent acquisition and the hiring pipeline plays an integral part in
influencing the organization. While these roles will be limited, talent acquisition strategy will
become increasingly recognized as a key to business success.
“I realized the single most important thing a recruiter has to do, to be successful, is to
clean up house. You have to be honest about how your workplace compares with other
options developers have, and think about the kinds of things they are thinking about
when they choose a career. You need to spend time with the CEO focusing on the things
candidates are looking for in a job, because honestly, if you have a perpetual recruiting
problem, and if you’re constantly whining how you can’t find developers, it’s a likely sign
that there are better places for developers to work and you’re only going to be successful
if you can fix up the situation to make your company more attractive.”
– Joel Spolsky, founder, Stack Overflow
2. The Candidate Manager
With the increased use of assessments, video, tests and background checks in the selection
process, the recruiter responsibilities in the hiring process are changing. Screening, shortlisting
and recruitment administration are becoming automated tasks that no longer require recruiter
input. This changes the focus of recruiters, which is currently on applicants, to candidates, with
the following responsibilities:
• Candidate attraction – coordinating the branding activity (not content curation), this includes
brand advocacy and the referral networks.
• Candidate sourcing – this could be a recruiter or sourcer responsibility, switching from
identifying and approaching potential applicants for specific jobs, to talent mapping and
connecting the company with potential candidates.

• Project managing jobs from deployment to completion.
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• Internal sourcing and mobility, including workforce planning.
• Acting as point of reference for applicants and candidates, until they are converted to new
hires/employees, at which time they typically interact more directly with hiring managers.
3. The Recruitment Administrator
Recruiters get tied up in logistics and administration, scheduling and similar tasks. The average
corporate recruiter handles 40 live roles at any one time, and that takes a lot of administrative
tasks when managed manually. If each role were to generate a list of 15 candidates requiring
phone screens that would be up to 600 calls that need coordination between line managers and
applicants. If five applicants were moved forward to the in-person interview, that would be up to
200 interviews that need coordinating, scheduling and follow up. For this reason, most talent
acquisition teams have created a recruiting administration team that manages the logistics, and/
or implemented an Interview Management Platform, because recruiting logistics is time
consuming and costly.
The principle task for recruiters is qualifying and converting leads and connections to candidates in
the talent network and converting candidates to applicants when there is a clear combination of
opportunity and fit. While it might seem difficult, the benefits of operating a qualified talent network
and only inviting candidates who fit, have the skills and experience, who have opted into the company
culture and values are abundantly clear. Recruiters have responsibility for building the network,
being a point of contact and managing the job and applicants.
One of the most important metrics for measuring the efficiency of the talent acquisition function is
time- to-hire. When the recruitment process is disjointed, the time-to-hire becomes elongated,
companies miss out on the best talent, applicants drop out because the organization appears
inefficient and this damages their brand and the candidate experience plummets.
To improve this, forward-thinking companies have switched the focus from the convenience of the
hiring manager to the applicant by automating scheduling, assessments and other tasks on a self-
service basis. IT giant, Oracle significantly shortened their time-to-hire by introducing a charge to the
business when a job went live with the recruiting team. This simple step created accountability for the
hiring managers to deliver feedback on resumes, schedule interviews and streamline other tasks.
When planning, talent acquisition teams should first look at administrative tasks and logistics and
which of the steps can be automated.
Assessments and Interviews
In the past, tests and assessments for talent acquisition were expensive to deploy, and required
training to interpret and administer. As a result of this, tests and assessments and background checks
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were applied at the end of the interview process to validate hiring. Advances in technology and data
analytics have really changed the game in this area.
Combining assessment and tests with video, for example, means tests can be completed remotely.
Assessments for fit and capability that previously took up to 90 minutes to complete can now be
delivered in five to six minutes with 98 percent accuracy (based on Jobfig.com, Smarterer.com and
SquareCubed.com) and at a fraction of the cost. The significantly reduced cost and ease of application
has seen the assessments move from the end of the hiring process as a validation, to the start of the
application process as a qualifier. When applicants are qualified, progressed or declined by
assessment at the start of the process, it streamlines and automates the qualification stage. When
assessments are used at this stage, short listed candidates can progress directly to the hiring manager,
or through the recruiter, via video interview.
Another approach is to include simple and quick assessments as a part of the sign up process for the
employer’s talent network. Qualifying candidates at this stage pays real dividends when it comes to
identifying who to move from candidate to applicant against a specific opportunity.
Assessment results also provide the data to validate talent attraction and branding activities against
capabilities and cultural fit, making adjustments to strategy where necessary. Where all shortlists are
pre-assessed, hiring managers can interview with confidence to make the best hires.
Interviews are also becoming more modernized as technologies offer greater convenience – through
video and recorded technologies that connect employers and candidates all over the globe without
travel expenses and scheduling hassles – enhanced collaboration and accountability, and greater
standardization with interview guides and objective rating features. Interview management is also
In 2013, Matthew Jefferey, the Head of Global Talent Acquisition Strategy
and Innovation at SAP, introduced a global assessment center (devised by
The Chemistry Group) that could be deployed globally to identify the ﬁt of
sales candidates against the SAP values and culture.
The assessment centers can be deployed anywhere, and require candidates
to complete real business tasks in a real life environment and the results are
used to determine who should become applicants.
The results of this approach are a vast improvement in the conversion ratio
from applicant interview to hire. Additionally, this greatly reduces the
volume of applicants in the hiring funnel.
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moving to help organizations reach candidates on their mobile devices, allowing them to complete
interviews from their smartphones and tablets, where ever and whenever it’s best for them.
Modernization of the interview process is also changing the way that recruiters and hiring managers
interact. Previously, recruiters would complete a preliminary screening interview, take notes as
possible and shortlist from there, oftentimes sharing incomplete feedback with hiring managers.
From there, hiring managers interview candidates, taking (sometimes wasted) time from their day
jobs to evaluate the same individuals. As more organizations adopt interview management
technologies, recruiters and hiring managers can evaluate candidates based on the same criteria and
questions. They can also view or listen to the same interviews, providing feedback in a more
collaborative manner. As a result, they can improve quality of hire and advance the right candidates
for further evaluation or hiring.
Onboarding
When it comes to onboarding, what works best will vary from organization to organization. The key is
that someone takes responsibility for the applicant post offer and guides their transition to new
employee.
The traditional approach to onboarding was to receive some
form of structured or unstructured training during the first
week of employment, but this is shifting to sharing content,
connections and other initiatives from the day the offer is
accepted. Including onboarding with the hiring funnel means
that onboarding tasks can be automated, but the relationship
between recruiter and applicant/ new employee is retained. 
take the

Project-Based Hiring
We have talked a lot in this paper about running hiring as a series of projects. The dynamics of hiring
are much the same as managing a project:
There is also a timeline and critical deadlines for each task to keep things on track. When tasks,
resources and deadlines are agreed at commencement, starting with the sourcing plan, it is easy to
track progress and identify any obstacles in the hiring funnel. Talent acquisition teams that have
adopted this approach to hiring experience a significant improvement in time-to-hire and cost-per-
hire along with the added benefit of significantly improved candidate experience rankings.
The project management approach is made possible by making everything visible and implementing a
service level agreement between the talent acquisition team at the deployment of the job by the hiring
manager. Typically the service level agreement includes:
take the
These are stakeholders:
• Recruiter
• Hiring manager
• Applicant
• Candidate 
There are tasks:
• Sourcing/branding

• Applying

• Long listing

• Assessing/background
checks

• Scheduling
• Screening
• Short listing
• Interviewing
• Delivering Feedback
• Offering/declining

• Onboarding 
There are resources
needed:
• Tests and assessments
• Interview media
• Template
communications
• Timeline diary and
stakeholder diaries
• Time-to-source
• Time-to-present
• Maximum time for review (resumes/
screens/interviews, etc.)
• Time-to-select

Applying the agreed metrics to the service level agreement, along with the stakeholders, tasks,
timelines and critical deadlines enables reporting on progress. You can also operate a system of
yellow (tasks on deadline) and red (tasks overdue) flags to keep things on track. By assigning tasks to
stakeholders at the start of the process, accountability for completion is spread from the talent
acquisition team to the task owner, presenting a greater likelihood of completion on schedule.
Self-service applicant tasks with a deadline for completion keeps the applicants on track. Mapping out
the whole process with committed deadlines gives the applicant visibility of progress, the steps to
employment and access to additional tailored content relevant to the role. It also allows for the
collection of real time feedback at the completion of each step. According to Talent Board, for
organizations that collect feedback on candidate experience, 80 percent of the companies that won
asked for feedback at the end of the hiring process, with most soliciting feedback as part of
onboarding. This is flawed because a hired applicant generally has a good experience (or they view it
as positive) and few applicants can remember the ATS screening process, the telephone interview,
and other stages of the process at this point. Incorporating real-time feedback in to the hiring funnel
and asking every applicant, gives a comprehensive picture of the real applicant experience and areas
for improvement.
Making relevant data visible and easy to interpret makes the management of the end-to-end talent
acquisition process effective, and allows for analysis of performance to continually improve the hiring
process and keep tasks on track. The key to achieving excellence is to create a single data flow from
candidate to applicant to hire or back to candidate, utilizing the CRM for candidate data and the ATS
for applicant data, with each job managed as a project, and with automated steps. While we often talk
about the candidate experience, we should give equal importance to the other key stakeholders and
consider the recruiter experience. The service level agreement ensures that all stakeholders play their
part and work to schedule and that the recruiter can keep track of progress via visible data. This is
often referred to as the single recruiter dashboard.
Summary
Some organizations are making significant strides to evolve the talent acquisition function. The first
step is to leverage recruiting technology to make data visible and easy to interpret. The role of the
recruiter is undergoing significant change. The days of the business passing the responsibility and
accountability for hiring from the talent acquisition team back to the hiring managers is here.
Adopting brand advocacy and social referrals as a single pipeline initiative, as well as giving recruiters
access to internal employee data for internal mobility and ex-employee data for alumni sourcing,
helps recruiters to build candidate pipelines now and in the future, with hires connecting and
following companies for up to seven months before becoming applicants.
In 2014, the role of the recruiter is that of a project manager, managing each new job as the start of a
new project, with a visible project plan incorporating stakeholders, tasks, resources and critical
take the

deadlines. This makes progress visible and manageable and automated applicant tasks and self-
service scheduling makes the process visible similar to a service level agreement.
Assessments, video screening, knowledge tests, background screens and data profiling can all be
delivered through automation. These tools combined with self-service scheduling, puts the candidate
at the center of the hiring process and reduces time-to-hire and cost-per-hire, and improves
candidate experience. This is because candidates are only invited to become applicants when they fit
the role. It eliminates the guess work. Talent acquisition is changing and the organizations that win
will be the ones that embrace the winds of change.
Resources
This paper incorporates the research findings of 120 global enterprises and their current hiring
practices and incorporates the findings of the following research documents:
• CareerXroads: Source of Hire 2013
• The Candidate Experience Awards – U.S. and U.K.
• Global Human Capital Trends 2014: Engaging the 21st Century Workforce: Bersin by Deloitte 
take the

About the Author
Bill Boorman has worked in and around recruiting and talent acquisition for the past 30 years. He
founded #tru events (the recruiting unconference) in 2011, and has hosted over 180 events during the
last three years. During this time he has met with and spoken to more than 2,000 talent acquisition
professionals in 65 countries to understand how the market is changing, and to research real
examples of best practice.
Boorman divides his time between hosting #tru events, commenting on recruiting, advising talent
technology companies to build products for the modern age. He has assisted Oracle, Hard Rock Café,
BBC and KPMG on integrating social recruiting and talent innovation, and in 2012 was recognized as
the third most influential person in on-line recruiting. He has been described by HRExaminer editor,
John Sumser, as “creative chaos,” and by China Gorman, CEO of Great Places to Work as the “King of
Social Recruiting.” Boorman is the Lead Advisor to Take the Interview. You can find him at www.
recruitingunblog.com or @BillBoorman.
About Take the Interview
Take the Interview is the only comprehensive cloud and mobile technology platform specifically
designed to solve the challenges of the interviewing process. Regardless of the interviewing medium
whether live, in-person; a telephone screen; or through video Take the Interview automates,
streamlines and helps standardize the process and related communications while providing analytics
for advanced decision making.
More information can be accessed at www.taketheinterview.com.
take the
Take the Interview 
307 W 38th Street, Suite 1315 
New York, NY 10018 
1-800-903-1593 
www.taketheinterview.com

A Blueprint for Modern Talent Acquisition

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