2023’s Best Executive Talent Acquisition Technology

We’ve spoken to 60+ Executive TA (Talent Acquisition) Executive Search and Talent Intelligence teams at medium to large businesses around the world. We were keen to find out mainly two things:

• How are they leveraging technology to support their candidate sourcing and engagement?

• What tech tools are they finding useful and where are there still gaps?

Here's what we found.

Talent Acquisition Transformed through Technology

Rapid digitization, remote working and new business models mean that recruiters need to look beyond traditional candidate pools for leadership talent. As a result, some of the more mature TA functions are building talent intelligence capabilities so that they can produce insights on locations, competitors, career pathways, organisational structures and compensation levels.

Despite the myriad of TA technology available, there are few products tailored to executive sourcing and engagement. Exec TA teams and Executive Search firms are generally using products designed for general talent acquisition for senior hiring.

Talent Intelligence and Strategy Tools

TA teams who use robust talent intelligence are often viewed by hiring managers as more strategic, through identifying pockets of talent that might otherwise be overlooked and through enabling recruiters to target direct sourcing where it is most likely to yield the best results.

Large data platforms such as LinkedIn Talent Insights use LinkedIn data to provide real-time insights on workforce trends, industry hiring patterns, job-seeker behaviour and more. LinkedIn has the most up to date and comprehensive database of leadership talent, however its coverage of C-level positions, particularly CFOs, is incomplete, due to some senior executives of large public businesses deciding not to set up a LinkedIn profile.

A popular alternative is Gartner’s Talentneuron, which collects data from thousands of sources including government bodies. While both can provide general insights into locations, companies and talent pools, some Executive TA professionals find the tools lack the specificity required for leadership level insights. For talent intelligence to be as impactful as possible, it needs to be focused on talent that is relevant for that specific role, e.g., a Finance VP that has experience in a regulated environment. Neither of these tools is setup to provide specific insights and so the output is useful as a rough guide rather than a decision-making tool.

Another alternative is to generate talent insights through in-house analytics. Dedicated resource and expertise is required for this so it tends to be more mature Exec TA teams who have a talent intelligence specialist or team who are taking this approach.

This is how the Talent Intelligence team at Savannah Group was created - manually building talent pools that are relevant to specific roles, extracting information on positions, companies and locations for each relevant person, categorising that data and then analysing the data to uncover and visualise insights related to talent pools.

The advantage of this approach is that it can be tailored to the requirements of a specific role and the sample used is highly relevant, resulting in more accurate and actionable insights. However, it is a time-consuming process involving multiple tools and significant subject matter expertise.  

Talent Identification (ID) Tools

The market is also awash with software solutions to help recruiters identify talent and connect with potential candidates.

Some of the most successful were not designed specifically for recruitment. For example, ZoomInfo began life as a sales and marketing tool but now includes a talent identification tool.

The biggest player in this space is undoubtedly LinkedIn Recruiter, a subscription-based service widely used by organisations as well as recruitment agencies and search firms. We are yet to meet anyone doing executive-level talent acquisition who doesn’t have a license. Its candidate search tools and projects provide high amounts of coverage, but it does have drawbacks for executive level talent sourcing.

• Firstly, it requires the user to really understand the candidate pool, for example, the variety of job titles or remits that would be relevant and the organisations employing people with the right type of skills
• Searching through industries for job titles and keywords often leads to too few results that then requires further iteration or too many results that consumes a lot of time to sift through to find the relevant candidates. Its ubiquity is also a drawback.
• The fact that every other Exec TA team and search firm is using the exact same filters to search its database reduces its competitive advantage.
• Some teams aren’t fans of LinkedIn’s search and results algorithms, and instead resort to deep web or x-ray searching for candidates via search engines like Google or Bing.

Some products have set out to address these short comings like Seekout or HireEZ (formally Hire Vue) which pull data from a variety of different sources and include AI capabilities alongside candidate contact details and messaging. Both these tools are targeted at general talent acquisition rather than leadership and executive levels.

Executive Search Tools

Investor Databases

On the Executive Search side, products outside of the HR and recruitment space are also popular. Pitchbook and Crunchbase, for example, are aimed principally at investors but their databases on companies and private funding make them useful tools to find different target organisations.

Executive recruiters using these solutions will encounter the same issues we saw at the intelligence and strategy stage. Tools designed for general recruitment become less reliable and less useful the more senior you go.

Relationship Databases

There are a couple of exceptions. One is BoardEx, a relationships database that enables you to map potential connections you might have with suitable candidates for board-level roles. The idea is to leverage the network and connections your team has, so it’s particularly useful for executive search firms where the Partners will have large networks and high cross over between colleagues. As the name suggests, it is very focused on Board level, so while the coverage of NEDs, Chairs, CEOs, CFOs and most Exco positions is very good, it isn’t designed to have large coverage of VP/Director or Head of level roles.

AI-driven Executive TA Tools

The other is Savannah’s new solution, MapX. An AI-based tool built specifically for executive TA, MapX mimics the searching methods of a professional headhunter or executive sourcer, helping you find relevant organisations to search in and identifying the individuals most closely matched to your brief. Designed to address some of the gaps mentioned above, the AI filters out candidates that aren’t a close enough fit which saves the user hours of time per project. Ideal if you’re looking for a fast but rigorous solution for senior-level talent mapping, talent identification and succession planning. What's more, you can try it for free. 

Engagement and Hiring Tools

We also looked at ATS/CRM-type solutions, and around a third of the businesses we spoke to are having to use the same mainstream platforms as the rest of Talent Acquisition. Nearly all report that it’s not fit for purpose at Executive level and are lobbying for their own system. The other two thirds use products that fall into three main categories.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

First up are the applicant tracking systems (ATS) – software platforms that automate the end-to-end hiring process from job postings to candidate communications. Current market leaders include Avature, ClearCompany, Pinpoint and Workable. Avature in particular has been a popular choice for Executive Talent Acquisition professionals, with a number of teams mentioning they are using it or are planning to migrate onto it.

Recruitment Marketing Platforms (RMP)

Then there are the recruitment marketing platforms, designed to help organisations attract top talent through targeted advertising, email marketing and more. It’s a space that is increasingly dominated by technology, with AI now able to take charge of many activities including candidate engagement on careers sites and content selection for social media. Examples include Jobvite, Entelo and others.

Talent Relationship Management Platforms (TRM)

A Gap in the Executive TA Technology Market

The HR tech market has been booming over the last five years, and it is projected to reach USD 40 billion by 2029 (Fortune Business Insights). Products are built to assist at every stage of the hiring process, most of them focusing on the much larger and more lucrative general TA market.

AI-powered products, in particular, are signalling an exciting future, where technology more effectively assists researchers, sourcers and executive recruiters in identifying, building and analysing talent pools.

As more executive TA teams look to operate as an in-house search firm, utilising executive TA products like MapX can help them enhance their capabilities and deliver insight-rich service. In doing so, Exec TA gets a seat at the table on strategic talent issues and elevates their position within the business.

Curious about AI is impacting and enhancing executive recruitment? And want to save time finding great talent? Sign up to MapX for free and try for yourself!