[Hong Kong] Talent Acquisition Strategy for 2023

Before we start planning for 2023, here’s what we learned in 2022:

• With the prevalent shortage of talent in the market, there are far fewer direct applicants from usually popular job boards. Many successful hires in the year have been through active sourcing efforts.
• Counter-offers are more common and more aggressive, without preventive actions, offers are easily sabotaged.
• Talents are demanding higher salary increments than the nominal 15% adjustments. For some severely affected sectors like tech or data, offers have been as high as 30% of the candidates’ current package.
• Higher turnover amongst new joiners (within a year), due to goals misalignment
• Candidates are open to discussing with recruiters about opportunities despite starting new jobs for a few months
• Hiring managers often have unrealistic expectations and an inaccurate view of the talent market, resulting in longer lead times and mis-hires.

However, with challenges, there are opportunities. With talents becoming more scarce, Talent Acquisition teams have assumed a much larger role to impact the business. HRs are no longer the back office administrators, as we can see the rise of VPs of talent acquisition becoming the trend. The TA team is now a strategic department involved in strategic planning, employer branding, talent attraction, acquisition, and retention.

So how do we plan for a robust talent strategy in 2023, here are the top 5 priorities:

1. Look within the Organization

One natural instinct we have is to look externally when it comes to replacing or filling a gap within the company. Although new talents can bring refreshing insights to a team, it takes time to build on the team dynamics.

Internal mobility is listed as one of the top talent trends for 2023 at Korn Ferry. Promoting within does not only ensure a high level of chemistry and cultural fit, but it also drives staff engagement and employee satisfaction. With an emphasis on talent development, this can complement very well with employer branding strategies as well.

2. Encourage Hiring Managers to Think Differently

As Talent Acquisition teams are keeping a close pulse on the talent climate, we are aware of what’s happening but that may not be true with hiring managers. Involve them early on in the hiring process, have a data-driven approach, remove subjective opinions, and strategize based on knowledge. For example, if we know the scarcity of a data scientist is high, but the hiring team takes a longer than average time to review candidates, then we should align on time sensitivity and take appropriate actions.

In these instances, having a tool to visualize your recruitment data is essential. Corporates that are using FINDRECRUITER have gained the key advantages of using the platform’s centralized recruiter management system to consolidate data, have a single source of truth, identify opportunities to improve recruitment bottlenecks and replicate successful patterns.

Keeping hiring managers on the same page will encourage higher cross-team collaboration and easier requirements calibration based on real market situations.

3. Get Your Candidates Excited

Sourcing and approaching candidates are only the beginning of the process. The entire recruitment loop involves much more important milestones to bring talents into your company. Creating a strong intended candidate experience is not only providing a good salary and having a big company brand; it’s critical to have a brand story that your audience can relate to. Measure how excited your candidates are by using NPS (Net Promotor Score) or cNPS (Candidate Net Promotor Score), so you can adjust your approaches and processes accordingly.

Apply empathy, personalize, be authentic in your message, and most importantly align your message across different channels. Make sure your social media posts are indicative of your values, company pages are up to date, and recruiters are telling the same story to the candidates you want them to tell. We have invited experts from IBM, OKx, Manulife, and Happyer.io to share how they manage their employer brand story, have a listen here.

4. Stay on top of Public Policies

In efforts to stay competitive in talent attraction, the Hong Kong Government has recently announced measures to lure top foreign talents to the city. According to Bloomberg, HKSAR is cutting property tax and easing visas for foreign talents. The Hong Kong Government listed 13 talent domains that are in high demand and offered preferential visa application and immigration policies for these talents. These policies can unlock overseas talent markets and enable you to hire from peers such as Singapore, Malaysia, or even Europe.

5. Assess and Adopt Recruitment Tools

Covid-19 became the catalyst of HR tech growth and adoption. According to research, 63% of companies are using more talent acquisition solutions today than pre-COVID. While the available technology has evolved tremendously in the past 2 decades, some popular adoption includes SaaS and Artificial Intelligence platforms.

image source: https://www.aptituderesearch.com/

Artificial Intelligence is developing at an unprecedented rate but we’re still far from a fully automated process. Even if you aren’t looking for deep tech to replace regular processes, it is advantageous to consider collecting and interpreting key data to support your scope of work. Here’s how you could start:

• Start with Quality Data: Without a clear vision or strategy for data management, companies often get lost in what data to gather, and how to use it to support their decisions
• Define Success: Define what success in talent acquisition will look like moving forward. This will help you scope your projects and measure effectiveness. Some key success factors could be time-to-fill, candidate reach, fill rate, or cost-to-fill.

This research conducted by Aptitude Research deep dives into key drivers of Talent Acquisition Technology adoption and the role of AI for Talent Acquisition in the future.

About FindRecruiter:

Findrecruiter.com is a data-driven recruitment platform, with the largest network of recruiters in Asia. Through our technology, our users can monitor and manage their recruiters’ performance and effectively shortening the recruitment time by half.

We are built for all hiring needs, from mass-market volume hires to hard-to-fill niche roles. Get in touch, if you’re looking to reimagine how recruitment is done.