Lotis Blue Consulting conducted a research study to understand how Talent Acquisition functions are organized and investing in sourcing strategies and technology to meet current demands and prepare for a post-pandemic hiring boom.

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Lotis Blue Research Study
Talent Acquisition
Report
2021

2. 1
Research Overview
Who, where and how organizations recruit has changed rapidly over the past year with no signs of slowing down. Talent
Acquisition organizations are challenged to keep pace with the changing talent needs of the business, an increasingly
competitive talent market and quantum leaps in recruiting technology and analytics.
Lotis Blue Consulting conducted a research study to understand how Talent Acquisition functions are organized and
investing in sourcing strategies and technology to meet current demands and prepare for a post-pandemic hiring boom.
Cross industry
representation
Majority of
Companies with
over 5K employees
Talent Acquisition
Leaders
(Director and Above)
PARTICIPANTS:

3. 2
Our research revealed insights related to four key topics:
Talent Acquisition Capabilities
Talent Acquisition organizations will need to advance capabilities
in three key areas to keep pace with external demands
Talent Acquisition Operating Model & Structure
Talent Acquisition organizations are driving efficiency and
scale through centralized models and relatively flat structures
Sourcing Strategy
Use of digital marketing and sourcing strategies have
increased due to the pandemic and are likely here to stay
Technology
Use of technology, automation and AI, however, is still
in its infancy in most Talent Acquisition organizations

4. 3
Talent Acquisition Capabilities
Talent Acquisition organizations are experiencing increasing pressures to be more strategic, proactive and agile in the face of
rapidly evolving talent needs. Our research surfaced three key challenges that were rated among the least effective recruiting
capabilities that we believe will be critical to addressing future hiring needs in a hyper-competitive market.
MOST EFFECTIVE
LEAST EFFECTIVE
Sourcing active candidates
Selection (screening, interviewing, and assessment)
Onboarding new hires
Recruitment Marketing & Digital Sourcing
Use of data and analytics
Providing realistic job previews / tryouts
Employment branding
Creating a talent marketplace for internal mobility
Sourcing passive candidates
Workforce Planning
On-premise sourcing (hiring events)
Leveraging Agencies, RPOs and Search
High Priority Gaps to Close
Workforce
Planning
Sourcing
Passive
Candidates
Leveraging
External
Recruiters
Talent Acquisition Capability Effectiveness

5. 4
Talent Acquisition Operating Model & Structure
• 88% of organizations
deploy Talent Acquisition
resources through either
a centralized or hybrid
model with centralized
resources enabling
greater scale,
consistency and
organization agility
• As organization size and
number of employees
increases, organizations
are more likely to adopt
a hybrid model, with
some recruiting
resources embedded
within a business or
geography to stay close
to local or unique hiring
needs
Centralized
62%
Hybrid
26%
Decentralized
12%
62%
Centralized
Operating Model Type
by Organization Size
77%
58%
38%
20%
75%
33%
50%
60%
25%
15%
13%
20%
Decentralized
Less than 1,000
Hybrid
1,000 – 5,000
5,000 - 15,000
15,000 - 50,000
0%
More than 50,000
Centralized
8%
8%
# OF EMPLOYEES
Talent Acquisition
Operating Models

6. 5
Talent Acquisition Operating Model & Structure
• In most organizations, TA
holds primary
accountability for all
candidate facing parts
of the recruiting process
including sourcing,
branding and attraction
and management of the
active recruiting process
• Establishing clear
accountabilities and
handoffs between TA
and HR related to
interdependent
processes such as
workforce planning and
assessments is critical to
driving efficiency and
consistency in the
process
Recruiting
TA
Operations
Sourcing
University
Recruiting
Employment
Branding
Executive
Recruiting
Contingent
Hiring
Selection /
Assessment
Workforce
Planning
Onboarding
Diversity,
Equity &
Inclusion
People
Analytics
TA 60% 71% 85% 80% 61% 64% 64% 53% 18% 28% 33% 31%
HR 31% 29% 30% 20% 35% 32% 23% 58% 57% 78% 85% 79%
Business /
Division 17% 0% 4% 10% 4% 11% 18% 26% 36% 16% 15% 0%
Other 0% 3% 0% 0% 4% 14% 0% 16% 14% 9% 11% 10%
Marketing 0% 0% 0% 0% 30% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Supply Chain/
Procurement 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 18% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Percentages include areas that may have dual-accountability across functions and may not equal 100%.
Talent Acquisition Primary
Accountabilities
Human Resources
Primary Accountabilities

7. 6
Talent Acquisition Operating Model & Structure
Recruiters make up
68% of total Talent
Acquisition headcount,
followed by Sourcers
which account for 14%
of TA staff which our
research suggests will
continue to grow as
organizations invest in
sourcing and attraction
over the coming years.
Recruiting
68%
TA
Operations
Sourcing
14%
University
Recruiting
2%
Employment
Branding
3%
Executive
Recruiting
4%
Contingent
Hiring
2.6
9.0
30.7
83.4
Volume of Hires
(annual)
< 500 Hires
500 – 1,000
1,000 – 5,000
>5,000
Number of Recruiters
by Hiring Volume
Talent Acquisition
Team Composition
# of FTE
Recruiters

8. 7
Talent Acquisition Spans of Control
• 78% of TA organizations
have 2 or fewer levels of
staff within their recruiting
teams, with most
organizations deploying
Manager and Recruiter
levels
• While spans of control
within recruiting teams
grow significantly with
the size of the
organization, large
organizations maintain a
relatively flat structure to
promote organization
agility and efficiency and
minimize organization
complexity
Small Organizations
(<5000 employees)
The average ratio of
manager to recruiters:
Medium Organizations
(5k – 30k employees)
1 : 4.1
The average ratio of
manager to recruiters:
Large Organizations
(>30k employees)
1 : 7.2
The average ratio of
manager to recruiters:
1 : 1.6

9. 8
Chargeback Methodology
“The ‘cost per hire’
chargeback
methodology left me
constantly defending the
value proposition of TA.”
‒ Fortune 500 Global
Head of TA
A common challenge that centralized
and hybrid Talent Acquisition
organizations face is how to resource or
fund the organization when usage and
hiring needs differ across operating
divisions.
While a variable cost-per-hire approach
promotes a feeling of fairness around
only paying for what you use,
organizations cite several benefits to a
fixed budget approach, including:
• Reduced scrutiny on the value / cost
of an individual hire
• Less reliance on accurate workforce
planning to predict spikes in volume
• Improved transparency around
methodology and underlying
expenses
83%
Fixed Budget
Treated as an
operating
10%
Variable
Cost per hire
7%
Other
Talent
Acquisition
Resourcing

10. 9
Sourcing Strategy
• Organizations quickly
shifted from in-person to
virtual sourcing as a result
of the pandemic and the
pace of technology
adoption is unlikely to slow
given the expected post-
pandemic hiring boom
• Less than 1/3 of
organizations have
adopted more advanced AI
and technology enabled
strategies to drive passive
candidate sourcing
• While 84% of organizations
rated their active sourcing
strategies as effective, only
58% rated their passive
sourcing strategies as
effective
Decreased usage of
on-premise job fairs & hiring events
90%
92%
86%
Increased usage of
virtual job fairs & hiring events
Decreased usage of university
recruiting
90%
86%
86%
74%
69%
62%
60%
52%
52%
43%
33%
31%
Social Media
Job Fairs/Hiring Events
Agencies/RPO
Job Boards
Company Careers Site
Referrals
University
Internal Hires
Executive Search
Virtual Job Fairs
Job Posting Optimizers
Talent Communities
Sourcing Strategy Usage
Covid-19 Changes In
Sourcing Strategy Usage

11. 10
Technology
While most organizations
leverage technology in some
capacity, few are using AI
like chat bots for recruiting
or delivering “nudges” to
candidates to encourage
them to apply, showing
they’re still early in the
technology journey.
Organizations embracing
more advanced
technologies and machine
learning to target and
engage passive candidates
are more likely to attract
and convert prospects into
candidates.
42%
31%
31%
28%
25%
25%
17%
11%
11%
11%
3%
Matching external candidates to jobs ads
Candidate nudges
For assessment
Targeted Job Ad Distribution
Candidate declination
Resume scoring & screening
Optimizing the onboarding process
Preparing offer letters
Matching internal candidates to roles
Interview scheduling
Chat bots
How Organizations are Using Technology Today

12. 11
Technology
Who has primary accountability for the Applicant Tracking System?
62
52
79
79
100
79
41%
14
31
In most organizations, accountability for technology configuration and
investment does not reside in Talent Acquisition, but rather in HR or IT,
contributing to the slow adoption of recruiting technology.
Technology decisions that reside too far from the end user (TA and
recruiters) tends to result in slower decision making and technology
adoption, under investment and sub-optimized, clunky tech
configuration.
TA
HR
IT
Configuration
Ongoing
Management
Data Access
& Reporting
Technology Adoption
31% of organizations
have not adopted any
technology to enable the
recruiting process,
putting them behind the
curve particularly in
targeting passive
candidates
69% of organizations
use AI or technology to
automate or enable at
least one element
of the recruiting process

13. 12
Addressing Areas of Opportunity
IMPLICATIONS
FOR
TA
To prepare for the demands of hiring in a hyper-competitive talent market, we recommend Talent Acquisition refocus on the
three key recruiting capabilities that will deliver the greatest impact on an organization’s ability to attract, engage and hire
the talent your organization needs to deliver results.
Workforce Planning
Effective workforce planning is a
critical, yet often missing, enabler of
the recruitment process. Less than
50% of organizations would
characterize their workforce
planning process as effective.
Proactive sourcing and pipelining is
highly dependent on Workforce
Planning that provides visibility into
the skills, requirements and
volume of future workforce needs
for recruiters to engage ahead of
business needs.
Sourcing Passive Candidates
As competition for talent intensifies,
an organization’s ability to attract
and engage passive candidates will
become critical to filling the
recruiting funnel, particularly for
strategic and “in demand” roles.
Effective employment branding,
digital marketing and sourcing
strategies like talent communities,
external partnerships and job
posting optimization will be key
levers to attracting and recruiting
high-quality and diverse talent
before they’re ready to move.
Leveraging External Recruiters
While not all Talent Acquisition
organizations currently use contract
recruiting staff such as RPOs or
agencies, they might want to
consider it in the future.
Contract recruiting labor enables TA
organizations to quickly flex to
changing hiring volumes without
the expense of holding full-time
recruiting staff. In addition, as the
talent market becomes more
competitive, so will the competition
for skilled recruiters.

14. Get in touch with one of our team members for more information.
Your Business Today
Transform
egrant@lbconsulting.com
313.658.0444
PRINCIPAL – BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
& HEAD OF TALENT
Erica Grant
asorensen@lbconsulting.com
312.343/4644
PARTNER – HEAD OF BUSINESS
TRANSFORMATION AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE
Aaron Sorensen PhD

15. 14
Research Study Participation
APPENDIX
Average number of hires per year Annual Revenue Company Size by Employees Industry Served
46% <1K 38% $1-10 B 33% <1K 22% Retail
33% 1K – 5K 20% <$500M 22% 5-15K 16% Professional Services
21% 5K+ 13% $10-25B 11% 1-5K 13% Other
13% $500M - $1B 11% 30-50K 9% Financial
Services/Banking
7% $25-50B 9% 15-30K 9% Insurance
2% $75B+ 9% 50-75K 9% Manufacturing
4% 75K+ 7% Consumer Packaged
Goods
7% Healthcare
7% Technology
2% Transportation
45 Survey
Respondents
36% Executive Talent
Acquisition Leaders
56% Talent Acquisition
Leaders

16. 15
Source: 2017 SHRM Customized Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report
Additional Benchmarks for Consideration
APPENDIX
n
25th
percentile
Median
75th
percentile
Average
Cost-per-hire 488 $500 $1,663 $4,669 $4,425
Executive cost-per-hire 247 $1,300 $5,000 $18,000 $14,936
Recruitment-expenses-
to-HR-expenses ratio 198 0% 4% 19% 15%
Requisitions per
recruiter (or HR FTE) 716 5 15 35 29
Requisitions per
recruiter (organizations
with dedicated
recruiters)
349 10 25 54 54
Requisitions per
recruiter (organizations
without
dedicated recruiters)
373 3 10 22 20
Cost Per Hire & Requisition Metrics
n
25th
percentile
Median
75th
percentile
Average
Time-to-fill 864 20 days 30 days 45 days 36 days
Acceptance rate 839 86% 96% 100% 91%
Positions
externally filled 747 66% 89% 100% 74%
Positions
internally filled 747 0% 11% 33% 25%
Time to Fill & Offer Acceptance