The Future of Talent Acquisition

Hello CollabWORK Community,

CollabWORK was in sunny San Diego last week attending Talent Acquisition Week, and what an amazing experience it was!

We'd like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who joined us for Burger Night at a local In-N-Out. Shoutout to Chad and Cheese for chowing down with us, and Evan White for helping put the event together. It was an unforgettable California experience!

We also presented as a featured startup in the first-ever AI in Recruitment live show. A livestream of our conversation can be found here.

If you’re among our new friends receiving this newsletter, welcome! To previous subscribers who maybe weren’t able to attend TA Week, below you’ll find a recap of some of the conference’s unique insights.

We're excited to continue supporting your talent acquisition and candidate intelligence needs. If you’d like to start working with CollabWORK or have any questions, please respond back to this email.

Best Regards,
Summer Delaney
CollabWORK Founder and CEO

CollabWORK is the first community-powered hiring platform connecting companies to referral-based and targeted talent pools at scale. We automatically distribute and amplify open roles to the "Hidden Job Market" - niche newsletters, Slack communities, Discord servers, Facebook Groups and other platforms - where top talent are networking and discovering opportunities organically from sources they trust.

Our solution, integrated with 40+ Applicant Tracking Systems, has an 80% interview rate and decreases sourcing time by 66%.

CollabWORK has conducted its first-ever talent survey, getting a pulse on how professionals feel about the community, AI and recruitment landscape. 

Of note, we found:

• 89% of respondents said they are more likely to apply for a job that was shared within a community compared to a cold inbound source

• 48% said community support is crucial for their job search

• Online communities are the most popular ways to discover new opportunities, second only to job boards

We also gathered research on how job seekers are using AI and what they value in job descriptions.

Download a sneak peak of our findings here.

Want to learn more? Reply to this email.

Below are some of our takeaways from TA Week.

Talent Attraction and Branding: Turn Employees Into Brand Ambassadors

At TA Week, we were reminded that talent acquisition and employer branding go hand in hand. As Craig Fisher, CEO at TalentNet Media, emphasized during his presentation on Social Media Recruiting, a successful hiring process relies on recruitment, recruitment marketing, employer branding, and technology working seamlessly together.

Fisher highlighted a crucial point: Candidates are your future coworkers. This resonates with our approach at CollabWORK. We help our customers achieve a swift and efficient hiring process by automatically sharing their job positions with communities where top-tier passive talent congregate. Our AI-enabled distribution ensures our customers’ job openings reach the right candidates.

For our subscription customers, we seamlessly integrate with over 40 ATS platforms, automatically pulling jobs and connecting applicants to their ATS. Our customers benefit from expert guidance and key talent intelligence insights throughout the hiring journey, ensuring your future coworkers have a top-tier experience from application to offer.

Compelling Topics: Gen Z and AI

Some of the most packed rooms CollabWORK saw at the conference focused on Gen Z or AI, demonstrating the industry’s desire to understand young talent and new tech.

As CollabWORK’s recent talent survey found, more than half of respondents said they use AI during the application process with the most popular use cases being writing resumes and cover letters.

Download our talent survey

CollabWORK connects our customers’ job opportunities with talent of all backgrounds by partnering with a wide range of communities, catering to Gen Z talent (like twenty) as well as executives (like Old Girls Club). We collaborate with these digital networks, transforming traditional referrals into dynamic references.

Diversity Matters: Engaging with Underrepresented Communities

While the future of DEI priorities remains in the headlines, sourcing underrepresented talent was still a focal point of several well-attended workshops at the conference. Brian Fink, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner at McAfee, led a workshop that resonates strongly with CollabWORK's mission - engaging with diverse communities.

We believe in meeting communities and their leaders where they are, be it on social media, Slack, Medium, podcasts, or Meetup. Boolean searches are a fantastic way to identify individuals discussing diversity within their communities. When reaching out, Fink encouraged people not to shamelessly promote their product but to engage with the person's content, offer assistance, and explore potential partnerships. It’s also important to understand each community’s rules and rituals to be an ally and not an unwelcomed presence.

CollabWORK takes on this responsibility for our customers by consistently engaging with new communities, nurturing these relationships, and providing our customers access to diverse communities and talent pools.

Meet Candidates Where They Are: Unlocking the Power of Passive Talent

As CollabWORK engaged with TA professionals from across the country, one thing stood out - the enthusiasm for accessing passive talent.

Communities are brimming with individuals who share common industries, skillsets, or interests. These are people who are eager to upskill, network, and stay updated in their field. CollabWORK excels at putting our customers’ job opportunities in front of these candidates, who are often already employed and not actively searching job boards.

During the conference, speakers discussed leveraging Google Ads and social media to target passive talent. CollabWORK offers a more affordable and effective approach, ensuring that our customers don't need to put in extra work to tap into this valuable resource.

Rethinking Programmatic: Engaging Talent Through Channels They Trust

Throughout every session, a resounding theme echoed: a need for fresh and innovative solutions in programmatic marketing.

While other industries have innovated the way they reach candidates through native social ads and influencer marketing, overall most companies still spend ad dollars on expensive job boards that get limited traffic and do not convert candidates.

At CollabWORK, we understand the power of partnering with community builders, creators and publishers who have built a trusted audience. Our unique approach involves promoting curated jobs in Slack communities, newsletters, Discord channels and other niche platforms, ensuring a more authentic and engaging connection with potential candidates.

In our recent job-seeker survey, a staggering 89% of respondents expressed a heightened likelihood to click on a job referral from a community, showcasing the immense impact of these networks. By partnering with trusted subject leaders, CollabWORK is able to amplify your opportunities to the right candidates.

Download our talent survey

We’d love to continue the conversation with both partners and customers to share more about how CollabWORK can improve your company’s hiring process.

Book a demo here.

You can also find us on LinkedIn and X.