4 trends to look out in recruitment landscape
The origins of the recruitment industry can be traced back to the beginning of World War II, when early head hunters looked for people to fill gaps in the workforce created by men who went to battle. What began merely as “finding an able bodied and willing person” has evolved over the last few decades into a science of filtering candidate profiles, analyzing their skills as well as their emotional quotients and personas to perfectly match an organizational requirement and culture. At an estimated global industry size of $638 billion by IBIS World, the industry is now at a stage where it needs to reinvent itself, using digitization and automation to reduce human error and increase efficiency.
Right until the mid-1990s, the manpower recruitment process was manual and inefficient. The process would not only be lengthy, but would also restrict companies to a rather small talent pool, making it very hard for them to match the right talent to a corresponding role.By the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, the recruitment industry saw a landmark shift, thanks to the emergence of job boards and recruitment networks such as Monster and LinkedIn. Today, over 90% of all recruiters post their jobs on LinkedIn and 75% of job seekers use social media to find new jobs.
While this was a huge step up from the traditional face-to-face processes, challenges to scale remain. Tracking leads from multiple sources, managing multiple e-mail chains and a huge mass of low quality and unrelated matches being sent for every post on a job board are some of the issues that most recruiters are familiar with today. The following industry trends will address these issues and will redefine the recruitment landscape in the time to come.
Automation
In the age of disruptive technology, another dynamic revolution is set to take place in the talent acquisition industry. Today Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms are being developed to screen resumes, send follow up emails and increase productivity of the hiring process. Automation eliminates risks of human biases in screening applications on the basis of gender, race, age, etc. and instead spots candidates best suited for a role. AI empowered chat bots also engage on behalf of recruiters with prospective applicants via popular tools such as Facebook Messenger. These “hiring assistant” bots are able to answer queries about roles and recruitment processes and only handover queries to a human in extraordinary cases.
While still nascent, some companies in the west are already experimenting with virtual talent using SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud). Similar to online dating, this next-level interaction between candidate and company happens virtually using AI tools to match requirements and skill sets.
Importance of Employer Branding
Another big trend that has already begun to be seen across companies globally is increased interest and investment in employer branding. The demanding workforce, dominated by millennials, not only asks for dynamic roles and attractive remuneration, but also evaluates offers by analyzing a company’s culture& mission, flexibility in the role, avenues for personal growth and learning. Moving forward, organisations will further focus on their digital strategy across platforms to showcase themselves as attractive workplaces, not only to attract the right kind of talent but also help engage with potential candidates even before the interview stage.
Freelance Workforce
Today, flexibility ranks very high on the checklist of a millennial job seeker. 40% of the US workforce will be freelance by 2020 and India is already home to the second largest number of freelancers in the world (~15 million). Working freelance creates a win-win situation for candidates, who are looking for more control on their careers as well as a flexible lifestyle, and organizations who can keep their workforces agile with off-balance sheet resources. The recruitment industry, however, isn’t positioned to tackle the challenges of this new phenomenon. The trend towards shared resources and flexible workforce will continue to increase globally, and we will see companies adapting and innovating their traditional structures to be more attractive to this segment of the workforce.
In-sourcing of Talent Acquisition
We are increasingly witnessing a large proportion of companies opting to keep recruitment function within organizations as against outsourcing to headhunting firms earlier. This trend is primarily championed by the new-age technology industry but is slowly gaining traction with other industries as well. The argument at the heart of this transition is that talent is a competitive advantage, which is central to a company’s operation – hence It’s management should not be outsourced.
To add, in-sourcing of recruitment brings with it the benefits of data security, increased efficiency, better matching of candidates to company’s culture and an overall superior candidate experience.It will be interesting to see how the traditional recruitment industry maintains its relevance in the wake of this trend.
As human resource practitioners, it is our responsibility to identify opportunity in these challenges and write yet another glorious chapter in the way companies of tomorrow will hire, engage and retain talent.
