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SMACking Talent Acquisition By infusing human capital management processes with social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, companies can hire the right people at the right time — and then keep them. | FUTURE OF WORK
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SMACking Talent Acquisition

Sep 13, 2014

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By infusing human capital management processes with social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, companies can hire the right people at the right time — and then keep them.
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Page 1: SMACking Talent Acquisition

SMACking Talent AcquisitionBy infusing human capital management processes with social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies, companies can hire the right people at the right time — and then keep them.

| FUTURE OF WORK

Page 2: SMACking Talent Acquisition

Executive SummaryAs workforce demographics shift and average employee

tenure shrinks, the competition for hiring the best job

candidates is fierce and getting more so every day. As such,

human capital management (HCM) directors and recruitment

professionals face a host of challenges, including:

• Difficulty attracting “best fit” job candidates to the organization.

• Inability to reach candidates that fit job profiles for critical roles at the moment of need.

• Frustration of desirable candidates due to complex processes.

• Misalignment of localized recruitment and hiring processes with the needs of a global organization.

• Inflated cost-per-hire or inability to assess talent acquisition costs.

The millennial generation (or “digital natives”) grew up with

social and mobile technology and led the way in adopting

these technologies. But today, job hunters across demographic

groups often begin their interactions with employers via the

social Web, where they expect to become familiar with the

employer’s culture and “brand,” learn about available job

opportunities and even directly engage with employers.

To cost-effectively transform talent acquisition processes

— including talent forecasting, candidate assessment,

job profiling and interacting with desirable candidates —

organizations need to leverage solutions based on social,

mobile, analytics and cloud technologies (the SMAC Stack™).

The advanced capabilities of the SMAC Stack are critical

to realizing a return on investment on talent acquisition

2FUTURE OF WORK September 2013

Page 3: SMACking Talent Acquisition

SMACKING TALENT ACQUISITION 3

transformation initiatives and are key to helping organizations

jump ahead of their competitors by attracting and retaining

the right employees.

This white paper offers a prescription for modernizing key

talent acquisition processes, including pre-assessment

surveying, candidate sourcing, candidate assessment, pre-

hiring and onboarding.

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4FUTURE OF WORK September 2013

The War for Talent Sign of the times: The list of companies with the highest employee attrition rates include an array of the highest profile and best-performing companies in existence today, including Amazon and Google, according to a recent report from PayScale.1 Even for these iconic brands, median employee tenure rates are about one year, according to the report. If these high-flyers can’t retain their largely millennial employee base with their lavish benefits and flexible work styles, one wonders, what company can?

There is no question that millennial workers have a different mindset from their predecessors about employment and what they expect from the workplace (see sidebar, page 5). To resolve the new retention issues that they face, employers need to look toward the front end of their talent management lifecycle. Talent management comprises three areas: talent acquisition; talent development and deployment; and workforce engagement and retention (see Figure 1). While challenges exist in all three phases, many companies struggle at the very beginning of the cycle. For instance, they fail to conduct adequate pre-hire assessments, and they spend too little time creating job profiles and formal competency frameworks.

Skipping these critical steps will lead to hiring and retention problems down the line, which can result in escalating costs. This is particularly true when you consider the high cost of recruiting and hiring talent, which can equal $3,500 per new hire in indirect and direct costs for U.S. companies, even at the entry level.2 If companies

Talent Management Framework

Figure 1

Workforce Planning and Analytics

Social and Mobile

Governance

Empl

oyee

/Man

ager

Case Management Employee and Data

Managem

ent

Sel

f-Ser

vice

Benefits Payroll

Talent Development

and Deployment

Talent Acquisition

Workforce Engagement

and Retention

To resolve the new retention issues that they face, employers need to look toward the front

end of their talent management lifecycle.

Page 5: SMACking Talent Acquisition

Figure 1

Quick Take

With millennials entering the workforce, employ-ers need to offer flexible new approaches to get-ting work done, as well as understand emerging market needs. A recent Cognizant survey of mil-lennial workers revealed several insights about the new workforce (see Figure 2), including the following developments:

• Millennials value career growth far more than training opportunities or work-life balance programs, and they equate international work opportunities with career growth.

• Millennial employees are looking for a greater

say in their day-to-day activities.

• This demographic is less brand-loyal than its older counterparts.

• To hire best-in-class talent, companies are seeking candidates across the globe to form virtual teams.

• Virtual employees are looking for more than just a phone call to stay connected with each other.

The Mood of Millennials

The Millennial MindsetA recent Cognizant survey revealed the following about millennial attitudes about employment.

The survey was conducted in 2012-2013, using Survey Monkey to field an online questionnaire of over 1,000 college students’ attitudes toward employment. Source: Cognizant Community Survey, 2013 Figure 2

SMACKING TALENT ACQUISITION 5

Do not hold a job

Greater than 5 years

3 years to 5 years 17%

12%

2%

33%

84%Important

1 year to 3 years

Less than 1 year 27%

42%

Work-life balance

35%

14%

Not Important

16%

Opportunity to grow and make a difference

Competitive pay, benefits and incentives

13%Values that align

with my own

If you are currently employed, how long do you intend to stay in that job?

How important is international work experience to your career progression?

What would be the most important factor when you evaluate a job opportunity?

4%Other

Page 6: SMACking Talent Acquisition

6FUTURE OF WORK September 2013

with high attrition rates could extend average tenures by just a year, they could reduce costs significantly and improve overall business performance.

Talent scarcity — particularly in areas such as technology and engineering — is another trend driving HCM and human resources executives to rethink their talent management strategies. According to ManpowerGroup’s 2013 Talent Shortage Survey, 35% of employers report difficulty in filling jobs due to a lack of available talent — the biggest shortage since the start of the global recession.3 And more than half of employers now believe that talent acquisition is increasingly com-petitive, compared with just 20% in 2009, according to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).4 The talent shortage will only grow as the first wave of baby boomers hits retirement age; according to Scot Melland, CEO of Dice Holdings, even if baby boomers delay retirement, there aren’t enough younger workers to take their places.5

An aging workforce and shrinking talent pool is a prevalent global challenge. A February 2013 report by the Canadian news journal The Globe and Mail reported that for the first time in Canadian history, retirees will outnumber people entering the workforce in the country this year.6

The Changing Face of Talent Acquisition Meanwhile, talent acquisition itself has changed radically in recent years, brought about by the always-on connectivity of the mobile Web and proliferation of social media use, among other developments. Roughly one-half of all U.S. organiza-tions, according to published reports, have decreased their spending on recruiting agencies and turned to newer tools, such as professional networking sites, social media and CRM tools, as lower cost alternatives to help build their brands as employers and attract job candidates.

Techniques that leading companies are incorporating into their talent acquisition strategies include increasing job flexibility, leveraging analytics tools to predict staffing needs and validate employment plans, enabling virtual teams with technology, conducting candidate assessments via video and recruiting where candidates are located (see Figure 3).

Initiatives to redefine talent acquisition are greatly aided by the application of SMAC technologies.

Trends Force a Rethink of Talent Management

Figure 3

Employee loyalty on the decline

Sources for talent are shifting

Cost of hiring remains high

Key Trends Elements of a Redefined Strategy

Enable flexibility to improve employee satisfaction

Leverage technology to drive retention

Use analytics to predict staffing needs Enable a boundaryless workplace Go to where the candidates are

Competition for talent on the rise

Unsuitable applications clutter the process

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SMACKING TALENT ACQUISITION 7

Social Media Employers are discovering that “relationship-centric” acquisition strategies are at the heart of talent discovery (see Figure 4). According to Dice’s Melland, this entails identifying and nurturing qualified candidates — for example, by using the social Web and networking with online communities — and staying engaged with them over time to develop pools of talent “that can be drawn upon as needed,” he says.7

Leveraging social tools can move organizations ahead of their peers in winning the competition for the best global talent. An example is TiVo’s social recruiting strategy.8 As a relatively small organization with big-brand recognition, TiVo wanted to create a recruitment process that would attract candidates who exemplified the strengths of its own culture. This entailed creating a candidate experience that incorporated elements of its corporate identity, from its career site to the e-mail templates used for candidate-to-employer communications. TiVo also leverages social recruiting software that not only enables sourcing from social networks and niche sites frequented by desired talent, but also encourages employee referrals by easing the process of sending job application invitations to employees’ social networks. Today, one-third of new hires now come through referrals, meeting TiVo’s goal of attracting workers who really “get” the company brand and understand its culture.

The CloudThe cloud also offers many opportunities for transforming talent acquisition. Cloud-based delivery of software applications, for example, can help companies consoli-date disparate talent management systems. These nonintegrated systems can lead to data integrity issues and frustration for job-seekers needing to fill out duplicate entries for two different jobs. Moving a dozen applications to one or two in the cloud greatly streamlines maintenance and cuts costs for IT. Furthermore, consolidating onto the cloud can potentially help normalize business processes across systems.

Applications based in the cloud can help clarify internal-facing processes, as well. Our clients report receiving thousands of resumes for a single job posting, and yet they have no efficient way to screen these large volumes of candidates because

= Employer Branding

Leading Employer Brands

Make Jobs “Social”Publishing jobs on social and professional networking sites.

Nurture Talent Communities Building and maintaining sticky relationships with the world’s talent.

Target Talent Supply Candidate Success Profile Sourcing Strategies Workforce

Requirements

Identify Prospects

Establish Relation-

ship

Match to open job(s) Proactive

Sourcing

Build Relation-

ship

Generate Referrals

Figure 4

Employer Branding Enables Better Relationships

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8FUTURE OF WORK September 2013

they did not create job profiles or competencies. Cloud-based apps that incorporate social tools and can be accessed via mobile devices can help. Many companies are seeking assistance around building the right job competencies, understanding their job profiles and leveraging social, mobile and analytics to identify and attract the right candidates.

Additionally, cloud-based applications are opening the door to capabilities that previously would have been unaffordable, such as pre-assessment testing. Long known as an effective practice for candidate selection, preassessment testing was validated in 1998 in a landmark study that proved a link between economic gains and improved hiring methods.9 According to the study, a company with 1,000 retail or contact center associate hires could generate a $15 million annual pretax profit improvement (i.e. 1,000 x $15,000/year) by leveraging preassessments that contained predictive validity measures. These measures might include general aptitude scores tied to job profiles, job knowledge tests and a variety of other structured assessment job predictors. Today, the cloud puts preassessment within reach for most companies by cutting the cost — traditionally $300 to $500 per assessment — by 75% or more.

AnalyticsAnalytics is also fueling innovative approaches to candidate sourcing, including the following:

• Forecastworkforcerequirements: Predictive analytics provide deep insight into the business’s recruitment needs — who is needed, where they are needed, when they are needed — even before business managers realize them. Different fore-casting simulations based on historical demand and economic scenarios will help the business remain flexible over time and realign with changing needs. These forecasts can range from projecting short-term demand for hourly employees to projecting workforce demand for the next five to 10 years.

• Conduct root cause analysis of attrition: The recruitment function can use data modeling to analyze and understand the factors contributing to employee attrition and then act pre-emptively to build mitigating factors into competency profiles for new roles.

• Targetavailabletalentsupplies: Organizations can use qualitative and quanti-tative information to build a detailed map of the supply of talent in a particular locale, in order to better visualize talent pool availability and employability; talent pool size and fresh graduate supply; skill pool by industry; and trends and fore-casted reports for future supply expectations.

• Definecandidate successprofiles: Using predictive modeling, employers can match the right candidate to the right job by identifying the traits that distinguish high performers. Potential candidates can be matched against a list of predictors of performance generated from current employee data. Success profiles can also include predictors of the candidate’s likelihood of accepting a job offer.

Talent Acquisition for Today’s WorkplaceCompanies that excel at talent acquisition work with SMAC technologies to understand exactly who their targeted workforce is and reinforce their relation-ship with this desired talent pool. A good example is Nike, Inc. When the consumer brand giant decided to improve its talent acquisition in China, for example, it used a team of 11 recruiters in China working alongside more than 15 agencies to interface with a cloud-based recruitment system. According to HR Magazine, the on-demand system enriches the candidate experience by integrating external career sites with Nike’s internal site and also helps the talent acquisition team better screen, select

Page 9: SMACking Talent Acquisition

Quick Take

We worked with a large food distribution company that used seven nonintegrated systems to support its HCM processes. Over time, the disparate systems led to frustrations due to poor data quality, duplicate data, manual generation of reports and an overall poor user experience. The company also needed to decrease its opera-tional costs by reducing the number of full-time employees required to support the various appli-cations, licenses and training.

We advised the company on a strategy and design for integrating its human capital processes and systems. In addition to creating a Web home page to function as a one-stop shop for all employees’ HR needs, we also embedded features such as videos, tutorials and self-help materials into the envisioned HCM solution.

The key elements of this project are expected to include:

• Integrated HCM processes.

• Consolidation of multiple talent management systems down to one.

• Simple user interface and greater employee use of self-service.

• Better insight through robust reporting tools.

• Improved data integrity.

• Learning management system (LMS) installed throughout the organization.

• Succession planning for critical roles and visibility throughout the organization.

• Greater employee participation and empower-ment.

• Effective and efficient business execution.

Home Cooking We have also worked to transform our own talent acquisition processes. Following years of sig-nificant growth, we implemented a cloud-based applicant tracking system (ATS) to help identify, manage and onboard targeted job candidates and to smooth the process for candidates and new hires (see Figure 5). The ATS functions as a strategic repository and communication tool for candidate relationship management, enabling us to source, mine and hire new employees. Key elements of the ATS include:

• Support for multiple languages.

• Improved recruiter productivity.

• Reduced operational costs.

• Enabling of strategic service initiatives to attract high-caliber candidates in the external market.

• Ability to interface with social channels, including job boards, online communities and executive search firms.

SMAC Talent Acquisition in the Real World: Case Studies

SMACKING TALENT ACQUISITION 9

Social Recruitment

Figure 5

Oracle HCM / Taleo helped Cognizant grow from less than 10,000 employees to over

160,000 employees worldwide

PeopleSoft 9.1 Footprint

Base Compensation

Base Benefits ePerformance

Enterprise Learning Payroll Interface

Promotion Bolt-On

ADP in U.S. & UK

Resume Mirror

ESA

Module

CRM

Career Portal on

www.cognizant.com

Whizza Visa Processing

Other third-party applications such as PMOs,

Prolite, eForecaster Data

Data Repository

Identity Management

System

Benefits Vendors

Talent Acquisition Manager

Workforce Administration

Track Global Assignments

Total Compensation

Variable Compensation

Manage Competencies

Employee/ Manager

Self Service

Salary Revision Bolt-On

Performance Management

Bolt-On

Page 10: SMACking Talent Acquisition

and manage a large volume of applications through a highly standardized recruit-ment workflow.10 The end goal is to build talent communities and stimulate direct applications.

As this example shows, technology alone does not deliver business results; success lies in coupling technology with HCM process transformation to deliver measurable business results, including rapid onboarding and increased efficiency. The SMAC Stack is driving this revolution on the system side: Social is becoming the new norm for attracting talent and interacting with candidates; cloud-based solutions are providing an intuitive user interface and nimble extensibility; and adding analytics to HR processes allows for better decision-making and achievement of high-impact results.

Transforming talent acquisition processes to take advantage of these advanced capabilities is the critical path for achieving results and return on investment. Figure 6 illustrates a fully automated talent acquisition lifecycle, along with the ideal process flow.

Next Steps To begin transforming your talent acquisition processes via SMAC, consider the following steps:

• Assess the current state of your talent acquisition processes, including recruit-ment forecasting, candidate sourcing and onboarding.

• Conduct one or more talent management surveys to identify how successful your company is in its hiring practices.

• Analyze which area(s) will yield the biggest impact.

The ability to attract and retain the right employees is fast becoming a market differ-entiator. Organizations that can infuse their talent acquisition processes with social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies will be ahead of the pack in attracting the best candidates.

10FUTURE OF WORK September 2013

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SMACKING TALENT ACQUISITION 11

Footnotes1 “Companies with the Least Loyal Employees,” PayScale,

http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/employee-loyalty.2 “The Cost of Hiring a New Employee,” Investopedia, July 25, 2011, http://www.investopedia.com/

financial-edge/0711/the-cost-of-hiring-a-new-employee.aspx.3 “The Great Talent Shortage Awakening: Actions to Take for a Sustainable Workforce,” Manpow-

erGroup, 2013, http://www.manpowergroup.com/wps/wcm/connect/3335c8e9-8b90-4496-adcc-af1e6ca28d6d/2013_Talent_Shortage_WP_FNL_US_hi.pdf?MOD=AJPERES.

4 “Talent Acquisition Crisis: Bridging the Talent Gap,” Monster.com, http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-advice/employee-sourcing-strategies/closing-the-talent-gap.aspx.

5 Scot Melland, “The Future of Recruiting: Impact of the Social Web,” DICE, http://resources.dice.com/report/impact-social-web/.

6 Joe Friesen, “Retirees Set to Outnumber Canada’s Youth for First Time,” The Globe and Mail, Feb. 18, 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/retirees-set-to-outnumber-canadas-youth-for-the-first-time/article8783751/ April 24, 2013.

7 Scot Melland, “The Future of Recruiting: Impact of the Social Web,” DICE, http://resources.dice.com/report/impact-social-web/.

8 “TiVo Reaches the Right Audience with Jobvite,” Jobvite case study, http://demo.jobvite.com/recruit/downloads/Jobvite-Case-Study-TiVo.pdf.

9 F.L. Schmidt and J.E. Hunter, “The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings,” Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262—274, 1998.

10 David Woods, “Nike Accelerates its Recruitment and Talent Strategy in Asia,” HR Magazine, Dec. 9, 2011, http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/news/1020571/nike-accelerates-recruitment-talent-strat-egy-asia#sthash.rJ50r3CD.dpuf.

About the AuthorsJames (Jimmy) Livingston is a Vice President in Cognizant Business Consulting, guiding strategy services for clients in the retail, travel and technology spaces. He specializes in business trans-formation, using enabling technology to drive strategy, business process reengineering, and portfolio migration to leading-edge technology platforms. In most industries today — where a focus on innovation, consumers, fiscal discipline and operational excellence is paramount — the effective use of IT is a critical component of the enterprise value chain that has a substantial and lasting impact on business performance. James developed the Future of Work readiness diagnostic, analysis and strategy framework called the Cognizant Index of Future Readiness. Using this approach, he helps clients prioritize opportunities, rapidly execute implementation plans and build an environment to enable the Corporate Operating Model using technologies such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud. He can be reached at [email protected] | Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jimmy-livingston/9/94a/545.

Arlene DeMita is Cognizant’s Senior Practice Director, Enterprise Application Services, Cloud HCM. She has more than a decade of outsourcing and management consulting experience within HR, learning, HCM and talent management. Arlene has worked with major corporations in financial services, technology, healthcare, energy, telecommunications, consumer retail and life sciences. Prior to joining Cognizant, Arlene was a global offer lead at Accenture and led the company’s Talent Development and Learning BPO Practice. Arlene has also held positions at Convergys and VeriSign. She has a Master of Health Service Administration and a B.A. in Humanities, and in 2012, she participated in the Smith College Executive Leadership Consortium. She can be reached at [email protected] | Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ademita.

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World Headquarters500 Frank W. Burr Blvd.Teaneck, NJ 07666 USAPhone: +1 201 801 0233

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© Copyright 2013, Cognizant. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission from Cognizant. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

About Cognizant Business ConsultingWith over 3,400 consultants worldwide, Cognizant Business Consulting (CBC) offers high-value consulting services that improve business performance and opera-tional productivity, lower operational expenses, and enhance overall performance. Clients draw upon our deep industry expertise, program and change management capabilities, and analytical objectivity to help improve business productivity, drive technology-enabled business transformation, and increase shareholder value. To learn more, please visit www.cognizant.com/business-consulting or e-mail us at [email protected].

About Cognizant’s EAS Cognizant’s Enterprise Application Service (EAS) takes a customer-focused approach to helping clients enable end-to-end business processes and deploy intuitive, new-age enterprise platforms to drive efficiency, innovation and profitable growth. Along with its global EAS ecosystem, Cognizant’s robust Human Capital Management (HCM) Practice helps companies address their most critical workforce challenges through an advisory and consultative approach, leveraging both on-premises and cloud-based HCM solutions.

Our 1,200-person HCM team uses tools that leverage SMAC technology — including pre-assessment capabili-ties, diagnostics and an acceleration toolkit that provides initial benefits in four to six weeks — to optimize the talent acquisition process for our clients. For more information, go to www.cognizant.com/cloud.

About CognizantCognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of in-formation technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the world’s leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquar-tered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and ap-proximately 164,300 employees as of June 30, 2013, Cog-nizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing compa-nies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.