The expectations of the recruitment experience – from candidates, hiring managers, and recruiters themselves – is evolving. Technology is empowering a new breed of recruiters who are strategic in their ability to surface the right candidates for the roles. Below are 5 recruitment trends in 2020 – are you ready for the new world of work?

 

1. Being a strategic recruiter  

The role of recruiters is changing. It’s more tech-enabled than ever, and they need to able to move from reactive recruitment to proactive sourcing from internal and external talent pools.

Technology allows hiring managers and recruiters to have a closer relationship than ever. Hiring managers can flag flight risks and recruiters can help build bench strength in one transparent, streamlined workflow. This visibility helps to remove barriers to great talent pool management and internal mobility.Yesterday’s recruiters’ role is different today and tomorrow. Armed with efficient technological tools and know-how, they’re more empowered to better engage with candidates and colleagues.

By shifting from reactive hiring methods, they’re now proactively sourcing from outside and internal talent pools. These accessible, easy-to-use HR technologies are key to streamlining and accelerating the hiring workflow. Such innovative tools enable hiring managers and recruiters to have closer relationships as well. The resulting transparent, simple workflow helps to eradicate constraints to excellent talent pool management and internal candidate mobility.

2. Hiring for soft skills 

Skills are the currency of the future, and soft skills like communication and empathy will be valued assets. Recruiters are shifting their focus to hire for the ability to adapt to changing roles in flexible organisational structures.The demand for social and emotional skills will grow across all industries , and while some of these skills – such as empathy – are innate, others – such as advanced communication – can be honed and taught.

In today’s world of work, roles and technology evolve quickly. In response, recruiters are looking for people who can adapt quickly to the changing face of technology and rapid economic shifts. Hiring for soft skills like the ability to innovate, be agile, communicate, and collaborate, is essentially hiring for the ability to change and adapt. Niche specialisations can often be inflexible. People hired off a specific set of experiences may not have the skills to adapt or change when those experiences are no longer required.

3. People analytics

As organisations become more sophisticated in the way they use analytics, HR is playing a greater role in influencing company-wide strategy. Organisations are moving from descriptive analytics to diagnostic and predictive analytics.Organisations that are more mature in their use of metrics sit in the diagnostic stage, where they can understand the ‘why’ of their metrics – and adjust their approach to meet strategic goals. Driven by advances in technology, these organisations are measuring and optimising how their tools and integrations improve time to hire and other recruitment metrics. 

Industry-leading organisations are mature in their metrics and sit in the predictive phase. Confident in their data and able to gain meaningful insights from it, these organisations can model and predict future trends. 

Across the board, HR professionals are getting better at identifying the metrics that matter. Organisations are looking at analytics across the entire talent lifecycle – from performance to retention, engagement, assessment, workforce planning and skill gap analysis to inform their recruitment strategy. But there are roadblocks – many organisations still lack the technology and skills required to surface meaningful people analytics.

4. Employer branding

In today’s competitive market for talent, a compelling employer brand is crucial to attract the best candidates. Perceptions about what makes a top employer are changing. Candidates aren’t just focusing on monetary incentives, perks or corporate prestige: they also want culture, values and ethics alignment. Your careers site and social media presence, the endorsements of employees and reviews of the company on Glassdoor all contribute to how your organisation is perceived. The challenge is not just projecting a great employer brand, but maintaining authenticity across these touch points. 

Leading organisations are moving away from the generic employer brand to achieve ‘brand resonance’. This means listening carefully to jobseekers, candidates and employees to create a brand proposition that attracts the people you want. 

The number one obstacle candidates experience when searching for a job is not knowing what it’s like to work at the organisation. One way organisations are addressing this is with ‘A day in the life’ videos that follow an employee on a regular day in their role. These videos are displayed on an organisation’s careers site to give jobseekers a behind-the-scenes look into the company from the employee perspective. Employees can also be valuable brand ambassadors behind the camera. Organisations are recognising the power of authentic, organic employee endorsements on social media in place of the standard corporate marketing campaigns.

5. AI is a part of the future  

AI is being used to enhance the role of the recruiter – but not replace them entirely. Unlike humans, artificial intelligence does not bring biases to the candidate screening and selection process. This does not mean that AI makes wholly unbiased decisions: the machine learning algorithms are still subject to the programming choices of the people building them and the existing biases in datasets inputted. 

But if carefully designed, AI can reduce overt and unconscious biases in the recruitment process. Organisations like PredictiveHire evaluate candidates using data, pattern recognition, and natural language processing to gain insights into applicants. In doing so, they are able to reduce bias in the selection process, and better match candidates to roles. 

AI can be leveraged throughout the candidate journey to free HR teams from tedious, manual processes and enhance candidate experience. Conversational chatbots can engage candidates at crucial points in the recruitment journey, AI can do the heavy-lifting when it comes to pre-screening candidates, and creating an agile, intuitive recruitment experience. But it’s not there yet. 

We hope that you have enjoyed reading what we think are some of the recruitment trends for this year. Happy hiring!