What is the Future Of Recruitment?

future of recruitment

The IT skills shortage isn’t new news to anyone involved in running a business. What’s new, however, is that the pandemic has made the IT talent skills gap even wider.

Still, hiring is about more than fulfilling the needs of the next open role, next quarter—or even the next year. Accordingly, it’s good practice to consider evolving recruitment trends. These trends have yet to affect your organization.

A successful recruitment strategy involves managing your current needs. However, you must also remain flexible enough to manage the demands of tomorrow.

Keep reading to learn more about the future of recruitment.

Information Technology Now

The United States skills gap is a billion-dollar problem. According to Deloitte, filling the tech skills gap requires an alternative approach.

The skills gap problem is massive. It’s possible that more than 2 million information technology jobs may go unfulfilled.

Now, however, many IT department employees are working in a remote environment. Resultantly, companies realize that they’re not limited to local IT talent. Remote working greatly increases your ability to source talent with skills that are vital for the success of your company.

Employers can now recruit talent from anywhere in the world. What’s more, they can hire like never before.

There were many office warriors who didn’t believe remote working was going to work. Now, they’ve discovered that companies have learned how to make it work. Resultantly, many HR thought leaders believe that companies will never go back to a 100% brick-and-mortar operation.

This sentiment is good news for firms in need of talent. Now, companies can pull from a vast full of candidates.

More importantly, they can find highly skilled talent that’s the perfect fit. However, decision-makers will also need to think about how location will affect pay scales.

The Work Environment’s Becoming More Complex

Before the pandemic, workplaces were becoming increasingly technologically advanced. COVID-19 has accelerated that process.

Since the world’s workplaces have gone virtual, the recruiting process has changed greatly. Now, face-to-face interviews are no longer an integral part of the interview process. Companies are embracing the benefits of virtual interviews.

Resultantly, firms will continue to update and streamline their hiring practices. Today’s firms must remain flexible in the face of continually evolving circumstances.

Now, a growing number of firms are preparing for a future where in-person events are not a part of the job. Accordingly, they’re deploying several changes to make the hiring process more efficient and effective.

Companies must change the way that they interview candidates. A tool such as an applicant tracking system (ATS) can help. Accordingly, more companies will make use of ATS platforms to schedule interviews and solicit candidate feedback from hiring managers.

Also, more companies will make use of talent assessment software. These firms leverage cognitive testing software to gain increased visibility into candidates’ behavioral styles. It also assesses their ability to adapt and learn quickly.

Initially, it can prove challenging to make the transition to hiring team members without a face-to-face interview. However, companies that take advantage of technology realize phenomenal results.

Firms Need a Different Kind of Professional

Most firms have made the transition to performing essential business functions in the new virtual environment. Some may have had trouble embracing video conferencing and cloud file sharing. However, these aren’t the only test of a company’s capacity to operate virtually.

Fortunately, we’re slowly winning the war against the pandemic, and some jurisdictions are easing restrictions on face-to-face interactions. Nevertheless, the pandemic has had a deep impact on talent acquisition and recruitment.

It’s completely changed employee hiring and onboarding. Now, most companies perform these tasks virtually. Resultantly, it looks like the new normal—at least in some respects—is here to stay.

Many offices remain largely unpopulated. Furthermore, lawmakers continue to discourage unnecessary business travel.

The idea of recruiting, evaluating and hiring staff without face-to-face interaction may challenge some IT hiring executives. Nevertheless, this circumstance is our new reality.

There are two kinds of companies succeeding in this new environment. The first kind of company had strong hiring and onboarding practices before the pandemic.

The other kind of company that succeeding in the new normal learn to adapt quickly. Instead, these companies enhanced their pre-pandemic processes.

Recruiters Are Adjusting to the New Normal

One thing’s for certain, many recruiting teams have been taxed to their limit by the pandemic. Furthermore, the heavy recruiting load is most likely going to continue.

Some companies are dealing with issues such as a lull in hiring. Conversely, others are dealing with unprecedented hiring demand in their industry.

In either case, HR professionals are tasked with aligning hiring with ever-shifting business priorities. Moving forward, it looks like the one constant that will persist among recruiters is the need for adaptability.

Recruiters may hire for varying roles and locations. Also, staffing needs can change. Resultantly, HR professionals will most likely get asked to perform duties beyond hiring.

The fastest-growing skill among recruiters is now personal development. HR professionals in this new environment must have the ability to add new skills to their toolkits.

Recruiters will increasingly take the role of the facilitator between a firm’s hiring needs and other critical HR initiatives. Now, they’re rapidly adding skills such as diversity and inclusion, HR strategy and decision-making to their repertoires.

Other HR professionals will bring clarity to recruiting data. Yet other professionals will reshape employer branding and fine-tune virtual hiring.

The recruiters of the future may likely need to learn all these skills as part of a continuous process of improvement.

Quality, Not Speed, Is the New MO in Recruiting

Many HR executives track time-to-hire. Now, applicant tracking systems make it easy to automatically log recruiting metrics. Resultantly, more HR professionals are turning their attention to business outcomes.

Time-to-hire is a useful metric for setting expectations. However, it doesn’t reveal useful information about the impact of new hires.

The fastest hire isn’t always the best hire. If you already have an automated system for measuring time-to-hire, it’s time to move on to tracking more strategic and impactful metrics.

With this in mind, you may soon find that the most useful metric for recruiting is quality-of-hire. This metric isn’t widely used. However, this circumstance will most likely change in the near future.

The Right Candidates for the Job

Again, companies now have the choice of talent from around the world. However, recruiters can only expand their LinkedIn networks but so much. Furthermore, you can only send so many InMail messages.

Now, recruiters must take a lesson from marketing. In marketing, one advertising channel rarely achieves desired results. The same concept now applies to recruiting.

Firms must take a multi-pronged approach to finding and hiring talent. There are a variety of channels and approaches available to achieve this goal. By diversifying your efforts, you can engage the best candidates with your open roles.

Job boards are only one way of reaching job candidates. It’s the way that companies have found employees for years.

Many companies continue to use this method. For example, they might interview job candidates from LinkedIn, Indeed and CareerBuilder.

For now, this time-tested method is working. However, this circumstance exists because of the unexpected reversal in the job market.

Before the pandemic, the job market was tight. Now, however, millions of people have been laid off because of the coronavirus. Once again, there are many job seekers looking to resume their careers using traditional hiring channels.

With job boards, however, you’re still left with the monumental task of sorting through and vetting IT candidates. Many job seekers will now gladly onboard with whoever hires them. However, it’s unlikely that they’ll stick around once the dust settles.

The Future of Recruitment

By 2028, low employee retention will cost US businesses more than $430 billion in losses. Employee turnover is a significant problem for firms in the technology sector.

Resultantly, it’s vital to put the right talent in the right positions. However, achieving this goal requires a new tack in the new normal. Fortunately, there’s a solution.

Your Partner in IT Staffing

Now you know more about the future of recruitment. Golden Technology understands the demands your company faces in the new hiring environment.

We’ve help firms meet their IT staffing goals for more than 20 years. Whether you run an IT company or any other growing enterprise, we can help you to find the best talent quickly.

Today, technology helps firms conquer new horizons. We specialize in leveraging technology to put your business needs first.

Contact Golden Technology today at (513) 548-4114 or connect with us online to find the IT talent that will empower your organization to prosper now—and in the future.

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