Last month, iCIMS hosted its first-ever combined customer and analyst event in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was an opportunity for influencers and talent acquisition leaders to share ideas, research, and opinions on everything related to talent acquisition and its impact on business outcomes. One of the topics discussed during the event was the increasing competition for tech talent. According to iCIMS’ Hiring Benchmarking report, companies only fill 6 out of 10 tech positions. And, it takes 50% longer to hire tech talent than any other positions.
Anyone who has followed iCIMS’ journey over the past two decades knows its commitment to helping organizations attract and recruit talent and the tech sector is no exception. One of its clients, Esurance, was at the event and its head of talent acquisition, Kristi Robinson, shared the challenges and success with competing for tech talent in the Bay area.
Esurance has 3,000 employees and is owned by AllState. Attracting talent is difficult since most candidates do not recognize it as a tech company. Its recruitment efforts are focused on data scientists, engineers, and digital specialists. In order to compete for tech talent and differentiate itself, it has invested in the following strategies:
– Start with the Employer Value Proposition (EVP): Esurance put effort into defining and communicating its EVP to both employees and candidates by focusing on team, culture and community.
– Focus on Campus: Esurance decided to focus on campus and internship programs to compete for tech talent. It was successful at making the candidate experience as simple as possible by leveraging event management solutions, capturing candidate information through QR codes, and engaging with candidates consistently. Its campus offer rate is 62%, acceptance rate is 88% and conversion rate is 54%- all above the NACE industry standards.
– Go Mobile: Esurance was able to improve the mobile experience and the mobile apply process. In 2016, applications submitted through mobile were only 26% and in 2019, they reached 39%.
– Improve Communication: The tech company leveraged TextRecruit to help improve candidate communication. The text open rate is now 99% compared to 7.3% for email and the text response rate is now 46% compared to 2.1% for email.
By streamlining the recruitment process and investing in these strategies, Esurance was able to improve the candidate experience by 36% year over year and decreased cost per hire by 41% year after year.
The challenge of attracting and recruiting tech talent impacts organizations in every industry today. As talent acquisition becomes more complex for organizations, investing in providers with deep domain expertise and solutions that help to improve the candidate experience is critical. The good news is that companies can invest in strategies that deliver results in a very short timeframe.
To echo iCIMS’ Chairman, Colin Daly, “Recruiting is not like the rest of HR. People are unique & special. Your recruiting platform to attract, engage & hire talent should be as well.”
