I recently overhauled my website and I’m proud to say I lived to tell the story. Eight years ago when I started Three Ears Media with two weeks notice and zero clients, I wasn’t really thinking about what platform would serve my long term needs. There were two considerations: Do I know how to use it? Is it cheap? I wasn’t worried about the future.
That served me to a certain point of growth. But it also created some inherent limits. I could create a course, but I could only have one at a time on the old platform. I had to use three different tools to get your email address from the form you filled out for a free download. It was complicated and clunky, but it worked most of the time.
Then it didn’t. About a month before my first big presentation of the year, one of those three different platforms broke. But they didn’t break all the time or in obvious ways, so I was just having a slow leak of technical issues that was costing me time. In my small business, those consequences were very small compared to the consequence of sticking with dysfunctional talent acquisition technology.
Talent Acquisition Maturity Starts With Better Pilot Programs
My life lesson here wasn’t just about trying new things, it was about fixing processes that barely work before they break. I hear this from recruiting teams all the time. When things break, the recruiters are already overwhelmed with req loads and administrative work. A 2023 study by KarmaCheck surveyed over 300 HR leaders at large U.S. employers and found that 73% reported experiencing burnout directly caused by recruiting and hiring pressures.
Of course, managers want to help. A burnt out team isn’t exactly on the edge of innovation. They’re just trying to keep up. This is often where things get off track and pilots are set up to fail. Managers look for solutions to solve one problem instead of considering the full lifecycle and maturity of their team. They don’t know which problem to address or they patch on another solution - but AI offers so much more opportunity if we can abandon that approach to problem solving.
True maturity in the future of AI and recruitment marketing means looking at the bigger systemic issues of your hiring model. It’s not going to be one tool for one fix any more. It’s assessing the entire process to solve problems that will cause harm later. That’s how we evolve from the olden days of Excel-based recruitment marketing to something that matches this moment where we can actually innovate.
Joveo’s AI Maturity Model For Talent Acquisition: Where Are You?
Just like everyone else, I’m curious and nervous about how AI changes things. I’m also excited. We have a chance to solve the headaches that have plagued TA programs for as long as I’ve been in this industry. But what are the marks of maturity? What does best in class even look like as we march into the unknown?
As any good recruiting consultant will tell you, it depends. Realistically, you’re all at different journeys, budgets, and stages of this progression, but our problems are not selective. We all face some of the same issues.
Take a look at this maturity model Joveo put together. With just a few inputs, it is meant to give you an idea of where you are, the high-level problems to consider, and what programs you can run to evolve and grow into the next step. You can try this tool from our sponsor Joveo here.
Thinking Ahead: What’s Next?
Remember when you’re thinking about your tech stack, it’s not just about the problems we’re having today. If you can’t get enough qualified candidates, have a high cost per hire, or know you’re missing out on passive candidates - look at your evolution along this path and consider where you can create immediate impact with systems. Identify processes that can solve many time and task issues.
Next week, I want to talk about how we handle the biggest pain point everyone who’s hiring is talking about with AI: application overload. That’s when you get a ton of unqualified candidates applying all at once. You know it’s AI, but how do you use AI to combat the overflow? That and more next week.
Meet My Series Sponsor
Joveo is a global leader in AI-led, high-performance recruitment marketing. The platform uses AI and data to make your recruitment marketing the best it can be. With Joveo, employers, staffing agencies, and RPOs have access to AI-powered (programmatic) job advertising, talent engagement, career sites, conversational recruiting, and unified analytics. As a result, they can reach more candidates globally, engage them effectively, get better hiring outcomes, and maximize efficiency and ROI.
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