The talent acquisition function is in the midst of a revolution right now, as newer and smarter technologies change the way both recruiters and potential recruits operate. Organisations are challenged in a completely new battleground shaped by global talent networks, better employment brands and social media.

Even with growing importance of technology in Talent Acquisition, it’s often seen that organisations in India Inc. are not able to embrace automation to the fullest, nor are they able to measure their Returns on Investment (RoIs) for each of the processes.

Technology and innovation are driving almost all the aspects of the business – including managing human resources and their capital worth. For talent acquisition, almost 80 percent of Indian businesses largely depend on some form of technology. However, a whopping 17 percent of organisations are completely unaware of the existence of any such tools for the same.

According to findings published in the recently released report by Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), in collaboration with CareerBuilder India titled, ‘Talent Acquisition and Automation in India 2016’ details on how companies across sectors are using technology to hunt and reach out to the right talent for smooth business functioning.

The findings have been compiled based on key hiring metrics from over 120 organisations in India, as a part of their talent acquisition strategy. The key focus of this survey, conducted between August and September, 2016 was to understand the extent of technology deployment in industries across sectors for hiring and choosing the talent with right skill sets for the right job.

80 percent organisations in India use technology mostly for job/social media posting, career websites, internal/external database search and background screening of candidates. The most startling fact is, a whopping 17 percent organisations in the country are unaware of the existence of any such tech tools for candidate screening, evaluation and engagement. MS-Excel (40 percent) is primarily used to measure and manage pre-hire metrics.

“Talent Acquisition is one of the critical yet undervalued functions of an organization. The simple automation of this asset can safely predict, accelerate, analyse and empower organisations to deliver the best for their products or/and services. Almost all firms, irrespective of size, industry and geography, struggle with a gap in expectations from their workforce on hiring and the actual delivery,” said Ms. Achal Khanna, CEO, SHRM India.

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“With the aim to analyze and thereby address this gap and give a push to technological assistance, we have joined hands with CareerBuilder India and come up with a report on “Talent Acquisition and Automation in India, 2016,” Khanna added.

“Human Capital is the single most critical resource of an organisation. To ensure consistent and stable performance of this resource, acquiring talent is the first step in this direction. Through this report, we aim to provide relevant insights, perspectives and current trends on how technology is impacting the talent acquisition sector in India. It is easier to arrive at solutions when the problems are clearly identified and analysed,” said Mr. Premlesh Machama, Managing Director, CareerBuilder India.

The biggest hurdle as seen towards adoption of technology in India is lack of awareness of relevant technology tools and the inability to track Returns on Investments (RoI). Furthermore, budgets, implementation challenges and internal bottlenecks (12 percent) regards adoption of new technology are some of them.

20 percent of the surveyed organisations indicate that ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is yet another source for metric measurement. This is closely followed by Recruitment Software (12 percent) and HRIS (12 percent). The recruitment software here includes career sites, ATS at the background and reporting (analytics).

While a smaller percentage of sample organisations (12 percent) are resistant to adopting technology, a larger chunk of 88 percent, are using technology in the Talent Acquisition function in some form or the other.

It is the need of the hour for all technology providers to make efforts to bring out the relevancy of technology tools in the Talent Acquisition space and meet customised needs of the organisation. Also, HR functions should look at building a strong business case around the importance and need of technology enabled functions, while putting in place tools/matrices to track Return on Investment.

Companies in India need to invest in improving the quality of hiring teams to make the process more effective, while looking for technologies that don’t just help manage talent acquisition efforts, but also streamline, transform and manage the recruitment process as a whole.

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