Doing more with less: How talent teams can make smarter tech investments

If you’re in a talent acquisition department, you’ve probably noticed that budgets and department staff sizes are not growing, but expectations are. You’re supposed to hire more people with fewer resources and more applicants. Then, do even more than that.

You’re not alone. Going into this year, a strong majority of companies (86%) expected to hire the same or more people as last year, according to the Future of Talent Acquisition 2025 report. Only 12% planned to decrease hiring. But about 72% were not going to increase overall talent acquisition headcount this year.

“TA is still being asked to do more with less,” says Kyle Lagunas, Head of Strategy & Principal Analyst at Aptitude Research. “Hiring demand is picking back up after a rough couple of years, but most TA teams aren’t seeing a matching lift in budget or headcount — and they’re not going to.”

Lagunas says that “the pressure’s on to get more efficient. Teams are leaning hard into automation and AI — sourcing, screening, scheduling, assessments — you name it, all to keep up with volume and speed without tanking quality.”

Help recruiters work smarter, not harder

For most, but not all open jobs, recruiters are not lacking candidates. They often have more than they know what to do with.

The challenge is to figure out who the quality, best-fit applicants are: Screening them, matching them to the open requisition, and efficiently taking them through a process that results in them accepting an offer and starting work.

With tools for sourcing, filtering, screening, rediscovering talent, nurturing, branding, recruitment marketing, assessing, background checking, and way more, technology can help. Or, it can hurt.

Some talent tech stacks have grown to the point where departments have to simplify and consolidate them. Many departments are finding that they have two CRMs, or multiple dashboards showing conflicting data.

Integration challenges create frustration when tools don’t sync. This adds complexity instead of solving it. Technology should be a partner, not an obstacle.

So, what are the smart investments to make?

With AI-powered tools, teams must decide where to put limited budgets for the most impact. Here are some tips to consider when making smarter technology investments.

Evaluate your current hiring process to see how it's influencing your current investments

KIPP Northern California was creating lists on LinkedIn, uploading them manually to Jobvite, and reaching out to a large pool of candidates in a separate tool. In other words, it had separate systems for sourcing, outreach, and applicant tracking, adding costly hours to an already time-constrained process. Add to that various education-focused job boards, campus event software, and more, and it took days to build lists, upload them to the ATS, and even longer to reach out to potential teaching hires. The company said it “didn’t realize how many inefficiencies we had until we started working with Findem.”

Get to know the tools already in your tech stack

Chances are high that your existing technology suppliers have tools and insights you are not currently using. Other companies you work with may have a roadmap of features they’re about to add, but that you are not aware of. Talk to your TA tech vendors about what you’re not using from their software. Ask how you can make your hiring process more efficient.

Bring your technology and data together

As Chris Galy said, “HR and TA leaders should insist on tools that enable a unified view of the pipeline. Recruiters with real-time visibility can manage the funnel more efficiently. Leaders can allocate resources more effectively and better manage their teams using data, not conjecture, to make decisions.”

Consider that the most important criteria in an investment is whether you trust the data

It’s easy to get enamored with all technology can do — until you start using it. The effectiveness of that technology rests on valid, reliable information.

The sophistication of the data influences how well it helps source candidates, matches people to open jobs, surfaces past applicants for new roles, and more. In the buying process, spend more time thinking about data rather than just ‘what it does.’

Ask vendors how, not if, they integrate

As WorkTech Advisory CEO Marilyn Pearson Hendricks says, asking if a company integrates with another software is the wrong question. Instead, ask how they integrate. Ask about the integration details and talk to their customers about their experiences.

Take your candidate searches beyond “skills”

A movement has swept the talent management field: skills-based hiring. While this is a positive trend, it’s possible to go beyond skills. If someone’s a good writer, designer, accountant, driver, lawyer, or security guard, does this mean they’re the best for your organization?

Not necessarily. It’s now possible to take a holistic, three-dimensional look at candidates that includes attributes beyond skills alone. Did the candidate work at a mission-driven company, a SaaS firm, or consumer-facing organization? Did their company just go through layoffs or a stock price decline? These attributes can help you make better hiring decisions.

How do technology and humans coexist?

The shrinking talent acquisition department has created a bad-news, good-news situation, according to Lagunas. On one hand, it’s tough for recruiters. On the other, recruiters’ jobs are changing for the better.

“Tech can only take us so far,” Lagunas says. “The things that actually move the needle in TA — relationship-building, role selling — still need a human touch. And with leaner teams, recruiters are stretched thin. Burnout is real.”

He’s excited about the expanding role of talent acquisition. “We’re not just filling roles anymore,” Lagunas says. “We’re getting pulled into workforce planning, talent intelligence, internal mobility. In industries like tech and financial services, it’s less about how many people you hire and more about hiring the right people with the right skills.”

Lagunas says the best TA teams aren’t waiting around for roles to open. “They’re building pipelines, advising the business on labor market trends, and using data to drive better hiring and retention decisions.”

Ready to see Findem in action? Schedule a demo today and see how trusted, validated data can help you make smarter, better hires.