The world of Talent Acquisition (TA) is in a fascinating, albeit challenging, paradox. Organizations are demanding unprecedented levels of productivity and impact from their TA teams, often with fewer resources. With global headcount down by an average of 25% compared to two or three years ago, recruiters are now responsible for 30-60% more requisitions. This isn’t just a trend; it’s the new reality, forcing TA leaders to scramble for ways to boost talent acquisition productivity.
In a recent workshop, Datapeople’s Co-Founder and CEO, Amit Bhatia, and industry veteran Martin Warren (formerly Head of Talent Sourcing at Grab) delved into how TA leaders can navigate this high-pressure environment. Their core message: 10x productivity isn’t about working harder, but smarter. It’s about embracing strategic habits that transform challenges into opportunities. As they put it, forming positive habits is the true way to boost talent acquisition productivity.
Would you rather watch than read? Here’s a link to the 10x workshop and 10x cheat sheet.
More demands, fewer resources
The numbers are stark. As Amit highlighted, “recruiters are handling 25, 30 different types of reqs at the same time, adding immense amounts of stress and pressure.” This increased workload is experienced at a time when hiring managers feel they can be more picky. As Martin noted, “they are hiring fewer people, so they’re more picky… pushing for that top candidate all the time.” The combined effect is an overwhelming sense of struggle for capacity.
The solution isn’t simply adding more tooling, embracing hacks, or pushing recruiters closer to burnout. It lies in identifying and implementing key habits that drive systemic efficiency and elevate performance.
Habit 1: Pinpoint where to optimize
A common mistake recruiting teams make is trying to optimize everything at once. They seek marginal gains across the entire funnel, missing the real leverage points. Amit stresses that in any process, “there’s 20 percent of your reqs, 20 percent of your process… one bottleneck that is dragging down your time.”
The key is to identify that bottleneck with data. Are you inundated with spam applicants? Check your pass-through rate; if it’s 0.5% or lower (meaning you need 100-200+ applications for one hire), you have an applicant quality problem. Is it scheduling chaos? Or perhaps sourcing effectiveness has plummeted due to gutted teams?
Martin underscored that often, the real issues are not always at the top of the funnel (like applicant quality) but in the middle-of-funnel – “where the candidates don’t go into interview fast enough.” He emphasized, “recruiting is a team sport… if you don’t have that alignment up front, then all this sort of stuff is going to come home to roost.” This strategic focus on where to intervene saves immense capacity.
Habit 2: Write job ads, not descriptions
While every experienced recruiter understands the difference between an internal job description (JD) and a job ad (if you need a refresher, read this blog), finding the time to convert that “horrible tome” of a JD into a compelling ad remains a challenge. Yet, the data is clear: on average, candidates spend only 7-10 seconds reviewing a job ad. Furthermore, companies typically see job posts viewed almost three times as much as their company homepage. Your job ad is your brand’s storefront.
Martin introduced his powerful acronym for effective job ads: CAD – Compelling, Authentic, and Different.
- Compelling: Grabs attention in seconds.
- Authentic: Reflects the true role, team, and company culture.
- Different: Stands out from the competition.
Candidates today prioritize knowing who they’ll work with, what growth opportunities exist, and the impact they can have. As Martin highlighted, “even just a single sentence of who a candidate will report to in a job ad, improves the time to fill materially.” The solution: template out key elements, so hiring managers can articulate their needs consistently and compellingly in five minutes or less.
Habit 3: Strong hiring manager partnership
Engaging hiring managers (HMs) is often cited as the biggest unlock, yet also the greatest challenge. Amit noted that relationships with hiring managers are frequently cited as a bottleneck to effective hiring. Differences in expectations, systems & tooling, and even ways of working tend to add friction that makes hiring more difficult. Learn how to overcome these in our Unleash The Potential Of New Hire Intake Meetings blog.
Martin detailed the “perfect intake meeting”:
- Respect Their Time: Go in with high-value, critical questions.
- Uncover Their Pain: Understand their current challenges (e.g., where do they feel bottlenecked) to gain leverage for trade-offs on requirements.
- Sell the Opportunity: Focus on “what’s in it for the candidate” — their impact, new skills, growth, team culture.
- Align on Critical Tasks & Skills: Identify 5-6 core outcomes and skills, avoiding long shopping lists.
- Establish Screening Criteria & Cadence: Lock in how candidates will be evaluated and how often reviews will occur.
Martin shared a game-changing strategy: get hiring managers involved in direct candidate outreach. He recounted how, at Grab, their CTO-sent emails to senior engineers saw reply rates jump from 20-30% to up to 80%. “Candidates want to talk to [hiring managers],” he emphasized.
This partnership is crucial. Amit suggested showing immediate value to hiring managers by using AI. In our 10x cheat sheet, we share proven prompts and examples. Amit highlighted one of his favorites is to create synthetic candidate profiles to share with hiring managers to “break up, req” and force trade-offs on qualifications, turning abstract requirements into concrete discussions.
Habit 4: Harness AI smartly, safely
While AI is in a “golden age,” the market is confusing. Amit boldly stated, “I don’t think the best AI tools today are necessarily recruiting tools.” He advises buying recruiting tools for their workflow benefits, not just their AI, as foundational models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot are evolving “like a vertical line.”
To leverage AI effectively, recruiters must become power users of accessible platforms. Amit recommends mastering the “anatomy of a prompt” (goal, format, warnings, context) to get precise outputs. He highlighted how easy it is to avoid the boring LinkedIn post promoting a new role by using AI to draft the post.
Martin echoed the need for critical thinking over full automation: “the recruiter still needs to do the critical thinking. You still need to be making the decision based on what the agentic AI serves up to you.” He also stressed asking vendors “lots of questions” about their understanding of the TA industry and their commitment to customer success beyond implementation.
Habit 5: Transform compliance into a catalyst
Compliance is often scary. It may feel like a significant drain, leading to wasted time when job posts are pulled down for corrections. However, it can become a powerful catalyst for efficiency. Amit shared four critical compliance checkpoints that, when automated, save immense capacity:
- Pay Transparency: Knowing and complying with location-specific requirements to avoid fines and delays. Identify your responsibility in this blog post.
- Job Profile Alignment: Ensuring the job ad’s salary expectations align with internal finance and comp teams to prevent last-minute offer approval issues.
- Brand Consistency: Using the right templates and employer value proposition (EVP) language to maintain brand integrity across all postings.
- Job Board Requirements: Adhering to platform-specific rules and leveraging features like hashtags and accurate job location classification (e.g., hybrid vs. remote) to maximize visibility and candidate quality.
By embedding these compliance checks into the workflow, companies can eliminate friction and dramatically improve time-to-fill. As Martin concluded, the role of TA is vital: “TA builds the capability of a company; without TA, the company doesn’t grow. It doesn’t evolve.” He urged TA leaders to “celebrate your wins and tell everyone” – including conducting “retros” for successful hires, not just failures, to share learnings.
10x is possible, with the right path
Don’t let a few problematic requisitions drain capacity and derail strategic goals. Transform your talent operations and teams with these 5 habits: pinpointing optimization areas, crafting compelling job ads, forging strong HM partnerships, leveraging AI smartly, and embracing compliance as an accelerant.
Seeking more wisdom from Amit and Martin, be sure to watch the workshop or download a reference cheat sheet.