The landscape of university Talent Acquisition (TA) has never been more challenging. Reduced TA team staffing, increased compliance obligations, and the ever-present war for top talent for onsite roles. However, every single day, well-intentioned hiring teams make choices that negatively impact key performance indicators. The impact most often shows up as deteriorated diversity and elongated time-to-fill. These innocuous choices create butterfly effects that stretch TA bandwidth and limit the visibility, reach, and appeal of your jobs. Avoiding these will ensure you are positioned to improve university hiring in 2024.
Battling this is a complex problem, but a solution is possible. Datapeople studies these issues every single day. Alongside our university customers, we have identified five key strategies to improve university hiring in 2024. Improvements that will ensure you deliver a compelling candidate experience that secures qualified diverse talent efficiently and effectively – for even the most challenging onsite roles.
1. Standardization secures consistency
Smaller TA teams, complex onsite jobs, and hiring managers focused on the academic year may feel isolating. Standardization will be your bridge, reducing time and resources to hire efficiently and compliantly. Standardization can feel like a lot of work, but as our university customers have shown focus on a critical few will improve university hiring swiftly.
- Consistent Job Postings: Develop consistent templates that ensure all postings are easily scannable, accessible, and inclusive of your brand and compliance standards.
- Pay Transparency: Adhere to pay transparency, and other hiring compliance requirements. Consistent salary ranges not only ensure you are in compliance but also build trust with candidates from the moment they read your job post.
- Employer Branding Integration: Ensure every touchpoint, from job postings to your careers page to interviews, reflects your university’s unique value proposition and commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace.
2. Empowered hiring managers unlock impact
Faculty and staff are often overwhelmed by additional hiring responsibilities. This may cause them to avoid training or even engaging with your team, making investment sometimes feel hopeless. However, with a focus on proven enablement capabilities, small TA teams can build high-performance relationships with hiring managers. Relationships that will help you improve university hiring by ensuring they self-serve on the ‘easy’ jobs so you can partner more deeply on those that are more complex.
- Self-Serve Options: Identify roles that can be filled through a self-serve process. If you’ve instrumented your process for standardization, they should have everything they need to execute effectively saving your team time.
- Hiring Manager Learning Program: Support the learning and growth of your hiring managers by creating a toolkit with resources for writing compelling job descriptions, conducting efficient interviews, and adhering to fair hiring practices. And don’t forget upskilling, ideally through seamless learning experiences embedded into your standardized hiring process.
- Streamlined Communication: Foster clear communication channels between hiring managers, TA teams, and candidates to ensure a smooth and efficient hiring process. Don’t overlook the potential of the intake meeting and in-context commenting to more naturally align your hiring teams.
3. Data illuminates the path to efficiency
Metrics tell a powerful story but only if you’re positioned to listen. For many university TA teams, data-driven hiring remains stubbornly out of reach. Improve university hiring by prioritizing the consistent and accurate capture and extension of data to power insights that guide your actions and strategy.
- Critical Metrics: Identify and track the critical few metrics like time-to-hire, offer acceptance rate, and diversity pass-through rate. Understanding these metrics helps you zero in on areas for improvement.
- Automated Dashboards: Invest in user-friendly dashboards that provide hiring managers and TA leaders with real-time data insights. This empowers them to make informed decisions throughout the recruitment process.
- Data-Driven Strategies: Utilize data to optimize your recruitment strategies. For example, by reviewing candidate sources you can identify channels that offer better ROI to streamline the process and focus your efforts.
4. Technology removes the friction
Innovative technologies that reflect the way you hire, and work to hire, can be incredible accelerants to improve university hiring. But with so many options out there and your limited budget, it’s critical to invest wisely. Focus your efforts by prioritizing user experience, ensuring seamless integration, and fostering a positive candidate (and hiring team) experience.
- Assistive Intelligence for Repetitive Tasks: Leverage assistive intelligence for tasks like interview scheduling and job description building. This frees up your team for more strategic work.
- Focus on Accessibility: Technology is only helpful if it’s used. Don’t lose sight of the importance of ATS integrations or browser-based accessibility to ensure your technology enhancement truly becomes an indispensable way you hire.
- Prioritize User Security and Privacy: Tools like AI-powered writing assistants can be helpful, but avoid compromising human judgment, ethical considerations, or data security and privacy. Ask the hard questions now to avoid falling into a trap later when AI regulations, such as New York’s AEDT law, become the norm.
5. Employer brand raises your profile
Building a strong employer brand and value proposition is essential, particularly for attracting in-demand top talent for onsite positions. However, success requires you go far beyond codifying your EVP. It demands consistent application throughout your talent journey. To improve university hiring, three engagement touchpoints make the most impact.
- Compelling Job Postings: Craft job postings that showcase not only the role itself, but also the unique work environment, diversity initiatives, and professional development opportunities your university offers.
- Careers Page Optimization: Make your careers page a one-stop shop for prospective hires. An experience that highlights employee testimonials, departmental culture, and career paths within your institution. Consider developing a careers blog that showcases your university’s thought leadership, commitment to diversity, and the benefits of working in your higher education environment.
- Thoughtful Audience Centricity: Too often university jobs are written purely for academic audiences. Not only does this complicate search on LinkedIn and Indeed, but it may also unintentionally exclude talent you desire to attract. For example, talent from a non-academic environment, such as those with a private industry background, may not be able to decipher the academic speak and choose to exclude themselves from your roles.
Improve university hiring starting today
By implementing these five strategies, TA teams will improve university hiring in 2024. Positioning them to impactfully navigate the competitive landscape and secure the talented, diverse workforce needed to thrive. Remember, talent acquisition is a continuous process. Regularly evaluate your strategies, adapt to evolving trends, and leverage data and innovation to stay ahead of the curve. Focus and iteration will ensure you are always positioned to improve university hiring.
At Datapeople, we understand the unique dynamics and complexities of university hiring. We are honored to support major universities, community colleges, and other educational institutions as they do the sacred work to educate the next generation of talent. By working together, we can improve university hiring for you this year. By doing so we will architect a more sustainable hiring future. A future that more easily, efficiently, and consistently secures diverse and inclusive teams to drive your innovation and success.
If you’re curious about how you stack up against your competition, we would love to provide a free evaluation.