Eagle Eye Marketing

The dates and year is not the only thing that has changed recently. As we dive into 2023, things may start to look a bit different than where we left off last year. Some trends are already emerging and will likely remain firmly in place, at least for the foreseeable future. Let’s take a look at how recruitment and retention is evolving and what it could mean for you.

1. Proactive candidate engagement

Proactively engaging candidates has long been a common practice, especially when filling C-suite executive vacancies; It was, however, rarely used when hiring for entry-level positions. That scenario is quickly changing now. In a LinkedIn survey, 84 percent of recruiters said that engaging passive candidates is becoming important in lower- and middle-level roles and for bringing top talent into the funnel. While many in recruiting positions are starting to realize this and incorporate it into their daily routines, the team at Target Solutions has been doing this for more than three decades. Building relationships and proactively finding the candidates best-suited to positions, especially Go-To-Market talent has played a key role in our success and the success of our partners.

2. Use of Recruiting Automation

2023 will witness more recruiting and staffing firms turning to automation for simplifying repetitive tasks and reducing admin work. In a survey conducted by the Society of Human Resources Professionals (SHRM) of 2,850 recruiting professionals, most agreed that investing in better recruiting tools and technology is the best way to improve recruiter performance. This means incorporating programs and platforms to help parse resumes, manage hiring and client pipeline, post jobs on multiple platforms simultaneously, and much more. By using automation to efficiently engage candidates at various stages of hiring, you will likely be able to improve important recruitment metrics like time to hire and time to submittal.

3. Diversity and inclusion

Business leaders globally accept that a culturally diverse workforce fuels innovation, creativity, and higher profitability. However, currently, only one in three recruiters track the diversity of candidates. Diversity metrics like gender or ethnicity of candidates sourced, interviewed, or hired—are rarely used today. But 2023 will witness a change in this ratio. More and more clients are increasingly investing more in diversity and inclusion efforts. So, recruitment agencies will have to focus on deploying innovative candidate evaluation tools designed to eliminate bias in recruiting and hiring.

4. Data-Centric Recruiting

The use of data in recruiting is in no way a new concept. For a long time, recruiters have used data to help make decisions. But, what’s evolving is the use of advanced technology to make hiring decisions more precise. This has led to a change in focus from grades or experience to the candidate’s overall personality. Tactical metrics —like time to hire, candidates per hire, or offer acceptance rate—will still be important to track your recruiters’ immediate actions. However, future recruiting will revolve more around strategic metrics that measure the business outcomes of the team’s efforts—not just the actions they take. Developing a client’s talent strategy will be just as important as executing it.

Recruiting will get more creative and complex as the most administrative and routine parts of work get automated. It will become less about execution and more about talent strategy. The recruiters will be responsible for anticipating hiring managers’ needs, solving their problems, and spotting opportunities for them.

Working with tech organizations that are in start-up or early stages is a niche Target Solutions has served for over 30 years. By focusing our attention on the technology sector, we have become experts in building the teams these companies need to launch and we work with them as they grow. But what is meant by Go-To-Market?

In short, Go-To-Market is defined as a strategy – a plan that details how an organization can engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service and to gain a competitive advantage. A GTM strategy includes tactics related to pricing, sales, and channels, the buying journey, new product or service launches, product rebranding, or product introduction to a new market.

As you can imagine, building and executing a GTM strategy has a lot of moving parts – and requires the right people in key positions within the organization to carry it out. That’s where we come in

Knowing and understanding the vision of the organizations we work for is a key element of helping to build these teams. Once we know what the goals and objectives are, we get to work on finding the right professionals to fill the right jobs and lead the GTM effort.

In our experience, there is a general assumption that early product teams or sales teams own Go-To-Market responsibilities, but it usually falls flat in the long term because the Go-To-Market process is not something that should happen by accident, or by a volunteer. A Go-To-Market strategy must be owned and managed to be effective.

By preparing your company and teams with the right frameworks and making sure you’re building the right assets for the right customer and market — you’re almost always guaranteed long-term success. Or, at the very least, you’ll know exactly what your weaknesses are before a launch and can decide to re-prioritize product feature sets or add more capital to a specific part of the business or hold off completely.

In other words, you won’t be surprised by a launch that falls short. And you won’t be surprised by a successful launch if you’ve checked all the boxes.

But the question remains, what exactly IS Go-To-Market anyways?

Product marketers almost always own the Go-To-Market process, since so much of the role depends on cross-functional stakeholder management and ensuring that the right marketing assets are being built for the right customer at the right time.

However, they are usually not responsible for the success of a product launch. That responsibility is something that is uncovered during the GTM planning process, as a Product Marketer would create a flow chart so that all stakeholders know exactly what they are or are not responsible for.

Clearly, operations is a big part of the GTM function. And that is an area of focus we include when helping organizations build their teams. We are not simply looking at just the marketing or sales functions, but also those that are responsible for the inner workings of an organization. Ideally, GTM should serve as a mirror for the health of a company, minimizing any surprises along the way.

Are you in the process of launching a new organization, product, or something more? If you need help building your Go To Market team, Target Solutions can help.

Many employers have difficulty finding qualified candidates to fill job openings. Employers are quick to say there is a talent pool that lacks job skills, business knowledge, experience, and formal qualifications. However, many of these same employers often avoid using executive search firms because they believe cost to be a barrier. Frankly, this is the furthest thing from the truth. Employers should weigh the cost of lost opportunity by having a position unfilled, the cost of having a poor hire, and the endless and tiresome cost of searching for a candidate.
The reality is most of these employers are not in the business of staffing and many don’t have human resources professionals in house. Not only are they taking away from the time they should be focusing on running their business, but are they really speaking with the candidates who are best suited to the position? This is a story we know all too well. And something else we know about – executive search firms have proven their worth. According to the American Staffing Association, with almost $90 billion in annual revenue, the staffing industry employs about 3 million workers daily. Recruiters in North Carolina, like Target Solutions, play an important role in meeting the growing demand for skilled, qualified employees in the U.S. Here are our top six reasons why you should work with us.

Massive Team Effort

At Target Solutions, we all work on your search. By taking a team approach, quite often we are coming at this process from a different perspective – and those points of view enable meaningful exchanges among our team, resulting in a more comprehensive search. We don’t post open positions, rather we seek qualified candidates who are a good match for the job and more importantly, who are a good fit for the company. Good firms can find candidates quickly. By leveraging our combined networks, which are growing all the time, Target Solutions can save companies significant time and money reviewing qualified from unqualified candidates. An employer only needs to indicate what they are looking for, and we take it from there.

Clear Understanding of Our Clients’ Needs

To recruit for a new position, first, you must write the job description if you don’t already have one, then post the job listing. Then be prepared to be inundated with applicants. You will have to collect, organize, and review cover letters and resumes; prescreen applicants based upon the materials, then pre-screen many through phone interviews, and then conduct formal interviews. Once you have narrowed down your choice, you will check references and verify past employment, conduct background screening, and drug testing, and then work out compensation. Finally, you can extend a job offer that may or may not be accepted. Depending on the requirements of the position, the hiring process can take a few weeks to a few months.

Sounds daunting, doesn’t it?

Our team at Target Solutions gets to know you, your business, your needs, and your short- and long-term goals. By taking this approach, we can help you achieve your goals now and anticipate future needs as well. Consider us an extension of your human resources team if you have one. If you don’t then we become that arm of your company. We do what we do best so you can focus on running your business.

A Huge Sense of Urgency

From the moment we engage, Target Solutions deploys its boots on the ground. Our goal is to get your position filled now – not next week, next month, or next year. We will ask those questions you don’t know how to ask or may not think to ask. For example, if you are unsure of appropriate compensation for the role you are hiring, we can provide research that shows what other employees are making in that role, in that industry. We also spend a considerable amount of time learning the ins and outs of the industries we serve. We know what employers expect, as well as where and how to find the right talent. Our collective experience will not only provide insight into talent availability but also salary ranges and local market trends.

Professional, Collaborative, and Strategic Communication

We like to pride ourselves on over communicating. You will never have to chase our team; we make sure you are apprised of our activity and progress every step of the way. This translates into a solid recruiting process. A strong process can also improve the retention and morale of your existing full-time employees. That’s because contingent hires are more likely to be a good fit for their roles, ensuring that current workers don’t have to take on extra responsibilities. We realize your time is far too valuable to provide you with anything except quality – and that comes from taking a team approach.

We Take Our Job Seriously, But We Don’t Take Ourselves Too Seriously

You know the adage “People buy from people they know, like, or trust?” We take that to heart. The mutual respect we have for one another translates to stronger bonds with our clients. The reality is, finding the right fit isn’t limited to your new hires, it extends to the team that is conducting the search for you.

Fun, Laughter, and Friendship Matter

We strive to build life-long relations. We will leave this right here.