Majority of millennial hiring managers (59 percent) in a survey done by CareerBuilder, Inavero and the American Staffing Association strongly agree that technology will reduce recruiters’ roles in their companies’ talent acquisition processes over the next five years. However, hiring managers across all generations are keen to leverage the data staffing firms can provide, including salary data and industry hiring trends.

In the current market, hiring managers’ primary reasons for working with staffing firms include the desire to shorten the hiring process (42 percent) and access to candidates with specialized skills (41 percent), yet 40 percent of companies maintain recruitment processes in-house to save money.

Hiring managers and staffing industry leaders alike agree technology will impact the industry; 67 percent of hiring managers believe it is very or extremely important their staffing firms use up-to-date technology, and 32 percent of staffing industry leaders plan to invest in new technology this year. Most hiring managers also think that staffing firms can be helpful in addressing top problems faced during the recruitment process.

“The results of these surveys confirm the industry is changing, and hiring managers are expecting more from their staffing firms to help streamline and improve the Hello To Hire process,” remarked Andrew Streiter, Senior Vice President of the Staffing and Recruiting Group at CareerBuilder. 

“More than 70 percent of leaders agree the staffing industry will be transformed by technology and automation over the next five years, yet only one in five feel that innovation is a major threat to their firms,” said Eric Gregg, CEO of Inavero. 

Companies partner with staffing firms to improve and streamline hiring processes, and most are not exclusively partnered with one firm.  Fifty-four percent of hiring managers plan to increase their use of staffing firms over the next five years. Also, hiring managers cite top pain points in the recruitment process as access to candidates with the right skills (52 percent), time to hire (40 percent), and budget (34 percent).