Believe it or not, recruitment as we know it today originated as a product of World War II. The war left significant gaps in employment. There were so many vacancies in the workplace, which gave birth to staffing agencies. The modern recruitment agency is a bi-product of history, and finding the right person to fill roles has always been hard for companies. Let us take a walk down memory lane to learn more about recruitment history and the rise of talent intelligence.
Recruitment and staffing have existed for millennia. Ancient Egyptians and the classical Greek and Roman cultures employed recruiters to find soldiers for military service. Conflict sculpted what we know today as the modern recruitment agency. During World War II, employment agencies boomed in the West to staff the vacant workplaces by those conscripted to take up arms.
Upon the surrender of Axis forces, servicepeople returned to their home nations. however, recruiters became overwhelmed, this time to fill public and private sector roles with veterans. Thanks to the technology boom powered by vast public R&D investment during the war, many were equipped with novel and valuable skills, e.g., plastics, computing, aerospace, and energy.
A new practice emerged: the creation of resumes that showed the applicants’ profiles and skills. Staffing companies at this stage became even more focused on efficiently linking qualified applicants with the right jobs. However, recruiters only had newspapers at that time. Due to the lack of technology, recruiters struggled to keep up with hard copy resumes.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, candidate databases emerged. These new Databases helped recruiters make better placements and made it easier to find and invite talent into the hiring process.
In 1994, the first public job search engine went live. Innovators created the Monster Job board, where job seekers could search the job database with the web browser. Monster Job disrupted the recruitment industry with its vision and ease of use. With the explosion of job boards and recruitment movement from print media to online channels, print ads for job requirements have almost become outdated.
In the past couple of years, we have seen the rise of an emerging breed of tools. These tools combine data from their recruitment CRM’s and ATS to help them make strategic decisions around hiring. We call the solutions in this emerging category “Talent Intelligence.”
Some Talent Intelligence tools are optimized to provide significant picture insights, such as which markets have more female software engineers or whether your pay rates are below the market (potentially handicapping your talent acquisition efforts). Other Talent Intelligence tools provide a rich view at the individual talent level, answering questions such as which candidates are most likely to succeed in a role or which high-performing internal employees might also be a high potential flight risk.
Managing talent may fall under the umbrella of Human Resources, but the entire organization feels its impact. Hiring accuracy, decreasing time-to-fill, and retaining talent are integral to an organization’s bottom line. When leveraging Talent Intelligence, you use a data-backed approach for engaging with your workforce across the employee lifecycle.
Workforce strategies need to be aligned with business strategies to create a cohesive ecosystem. With the power of machine learning, automated processes, and the ability to visibly connect data points, recruiters can make faster and more accurate hires. Global organizations must adapt to new technologies faster than ever before if only to keep up with their competitors.
At Loxo, our best-in-class applicant tracking system is the backbone of your recruiting business processes. With Loxo’s automated recruitment solutions, your business will have a talent-intelligence advantage in a competitive business world. Request a demo today to learn more and get started.
