To maintain the competitive edge you are increasingly cutting cost, improving productivity, consolidating core competencies and driving continuous growth. Finding the right talent takes center stage in the strategy to maintain that advantage. You certainly cannot afford to go wrong. However, research on current trends indicates you may be heading south.

Increasing Cost-to-Hire ranges from 15% - 20% of a new employees annual pay. Add to this, the ever growing cost of vendor management, agency fees, evaluations and external solutions and you have a steeply rising curve.

Staggering Vacancy Cost ranges from 48% to 61% of an employees annual pay. This translates to a company with $100 mn in revenue employing 6,000 people losing $32,000 of revenue with every position vacant for 35 days!

Restricted ReachOf the 152 million eligible candidates in the U.S job market, only 21 million (14%) are active job seekers frequently visiting job boards. This happens to be the biggest part of the recruitment strategy for majority of the firms and staffing companies.

Communication gap74% of companies want to proactively search for and communicate with desirable candidates, both active and passive. But only 11% manage to do so. So, only 11% have an effective strategic-hiring agenda, the rest go with short-term, tactical solutions thereby increasing their dependency on agencies.

Retention crisis 50% of workers are not completely satisfied with their jobs and 56% are poised for another opportunity if it comes along. Managing attrition takes away 37% of HR budget.

Sources: Monster Intelligence Research, Watson & Wyatt, Manpower, Aberdeen Group, & First Advantage

What Does This INDICATE?
Supply of talent will not catch up with the demand any time soon there will be shortage of talent in the market. It will take longer and cost more to hire. The cost of open positions will continue to have an impact on the bottom line.If you work around the problems by delegating your recruitment function to conventional hiring agencies or you start relying on job boards, it will work fine in the immediate term but will bring in a new set of issues.

• Too many vendors to manage.
• Too many resumes to scan through.
• Low conversion rate of resumes forwarded by agencies.
• Spending the time of your most skilled workforce on interviewing prospect hires.
• Pressure to compromise quality and fill up a position.
• Looking outwards for external solutions to manage recruitment and not ever sure which one will work.

If you are facing any or all of the issues mentioned above. You need to ask yourself, Is your Talent Search really working for you?