It’s a rare question in talent acquisition: What if we suddenly had more budget than we needed?
But that’s exactly what’s happening—and it’s time for TA to rethink how it operates.
While the talent acquisition industry is consumed with AI and its implications for TA organizations and processes, a parallel transformation is happening on the candidate side. Candidates are now armed.
And not just with ChatGPT enhanced resumes and well written applications. Candidate tools have the ability to search all career sites and identify job postings that meet almost any criteria.
Let’s be blunt: a $14 billion industry just became obsolete.
Why does anyone need a job board anymore? Job boards consolidate jobs by scraping career sites but there is no longer a need for an intermediary. Candidate job-search tools can complete the task as efficiently as job boards, and fill out the application while they are at it.
So where does the $14 billion savings go?
With some organizations spending $1 million a month on programmatic advertising, the savings are substantial. Undoubtedly, employers will need to invest more in their own AI tools, but even the most ambitious pricing models won’t consume all of it.
The best TA leaders are already on the task of redeploying resources. Some of them have pulled out their lists titled, “If I just had the money, I would...” and are starting to build the business case for strategic projects. The projects range from robust internal mobility platforms to enhanced onboarding.
But one priority consistently rises to the top: strategic, comprehensive recruitment marketing.
(Full disclosure, I run the leading recruitment marketing platform.)
The escalation of automation in the recruiting process has left candidates feeling processed rather than recruited. Systems are set up that don’t allow the candidates any insight into the company, culture, work team or hiring manager. Many candidates are being screened and hired without talking to a single human being. Their questions are answered by bots and their familiarity with the company is limited to automated systems. The entire process has become transactional.
And then we wonder why drop-off rates spike, misalignment increases and quality of hire declines.
Good recruitment marketers want to attract candidates who are intentional applicants. An intentional applicant is an individual who is familiar with an employer, knowledgeable about an opportunity and seeks out an application. Ultimately, recruiting efficiency and quality of hire are optimized with intentional applicants.
Good recruitment marketing is not employer branding with a facelift. Recruitment marketing starts with identification of targeted audiences and identification of the information that is important to them at each stage of the recruitment process. The information that an entry-level finance analyst wants is entirely different from the information needed by a senior sales leader. The information that is most interesting at the beginning of the candidate journey is entirely different from the information needed to accept an offer.
The best recruitment marketing strategies map content to every stage of the candidate funnel. They prioritize format, relevance and timing to ensure high engagement and informed decision-making. Throw in key performance metrics and TA will start managing their pipeline with the sophistication of corporate Marketing and Sales.
But this machine needs to be set up now, funded with pull-backs from programmatic advertising and established before TA is back in the position of making lists of initiative they would take, “if I just had the money.” AI is fundamentally changing the recruiting process and if employers don’t balance the automation with candidate focused content, they will lose all the efficiencies that technology promised.
The landscape has shifted. Job boards are fading. Candidate expectations are rising. AI is changing the rules. And if TA doesn’t adapt quickly—reallocating dollars and rebuilding its strategy—it risks missing the moment entirely.
The money is on the table. The question is: what will you do with it?