9 Recruitment Trends Every Business Or Team Head Should Know Of

As a manager or a business owner, what are you doing to address your recruitment challenges? Here are 9 trends in recruitment that you should know about. 

Change is a certainty; therefore, major changes are occurring in the arena of Human Resources as well. The dynamics of how we recruit and retain are all evolving. The paradigm shift is evident – businesses now don’t just focus on making money through services or commodities; they realize the importance of investing in building credibility as an employer and as an establishment.

The Employer brand is as important as an organization’s brand, but they are often different from each other. 

Today, clients have deep visibility and do research to understand what your brand quotient as an organization is. How happy are your employees? Are people in the job market keen on your brand? That is because at the end of the day people make an organization – they deliver or produce what you sell.

How do you recruit the best people? How do you retain the best? How to manage a diverse workforce in the best way? These are the most critical questions for any organization. Companies globally are spending a fortune in their quest to answer these core issues.

Here are the top global trends you should be aware of with regard to each of these concerns.

How to recruit the best

Merely acknowledging the need for hiring the best talent is not enough to actually do so. We must wear our thinking caps!

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1. A metric-driven employee referral program

Obviously, referrals are not new in the arena of recruitment but the results that they produce have been strengthened by the astounding growth and usage of social media. The strategic referral goal of most firms today is to build a recruiting culture which makes every employee a talent scout, and to channel these employee talent discoveries through a data-driven employee referral program.

2. Predictive metrics and the use of big data

Recruitment data was predominantly historic and hence had no or minimal impact. Thought leaders across the industry are now beginning to follow the lead of the rest of the business in adapting advanced metrics.

The focus now is on real time metrics that let managers know what is happening today, and predictive metrics, which alert everyone about upcoming recruiting problems and opportunities.

3. Positive Employer branding is emerging as a long-term recruiting strategy 

Strategic employer branding emerges as the only long-term recruiting strategy. This shift is due to increased competition in recruiting and the rise of social media.

Connectivity breeds visibility and makes it very easy for others to virally spread either positive or negative comments about an employer. Talent leaders are convinced that providing a weak candidate experience can quickly damage their brand.

4. Innovation increases the need for recruiting innovators 

Innovation driven firms like Apple, Google, and Facebook have demonstrated the high economic impact of hiring, retaining, and managing innovators.

The changed expectation for rapid corporate growth now translates to having more innovators in teams. That can’t happen unless current recruiting systems are redesigned to effectively identify, recruit and hire innovators.

5. Accepting social media profiles in lieu of resumes

Companies have come to realize that accepting a social media profile alone (usually a LinkedIn profile) is more than adequate at least initially, to begin the hiring process.

The corporate goal of targeting and recruiting top prospects that are not in job search mode is difficult to be met if an up-to-date resume is required. In fact, these individuals resist applying for a job simply because they don’t have the time to update their resume!

6. A great candidate experience

Research has proved that an employer can damage their brand by making it impossible to apply for a job, not reverting to candidates, or treating them poorly during the interview process.

If the candidate experience is unpleasant while applying for a job at your company, word spreads around and soon you may find no candidates.

7. Modernized applicant tracking software

A new breed of recruitment tools is fast emerging, replacing the obsolete time consuming tools. They focus on managing the entire recruitment process, monitoring ad campaigns, and creating an excellent candidate experience.

8. Building an End-to-End Talent Brand

Modern recruiters work directly with the SVP of Marketing to create a research-based, authentic employment brand and promote it on the front page of the company website, not just in the careers section.

A large percentage of the people who visit a company online are perspective employees – people looking for jobs – therefore, grabbing their attention is critical.

The Talent brand is highly specific, authentic, and narrow – so, ensuring that just the right people are attracted is of utmost importance. This is called creating a tunnel of perspective employees – candidates. It is futile to attract candidates who don’t fully comprehend what you do and how you do it.

There are professional companies now in the market that can help build this professional corporate brand, to name a few such as  TMP, Futurestep, Pinstripe and Seven Step RPO.

9. Recruiters are Sourcers

 Globalization and the ever increasing need for specialized skills makes the role of the recruiter very important. Organisations have begun to therefore question if they want recruiters to spend their time interviewing candidates or sourcing great profiles.

The highest-performing companies are convinced that letting recruiters focus on high-powered sourcing and initial screening is the need of the hour.

A version of this post was originally published here.

Pic credit: Flazingo (Used under a CC license)

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