5 Modern Recruitment Trends to Prepare for Post-2020
Organizations and recruitment teams usually fall into three categories with respect to the creation and analysis of recruitment trends : influencers, ignorant, and involved.
Influencers: Whether it’s DocuSign’s candidate experience survey or Slack’s relentless dedication to upskilling interviewers, these organizations are at the forefront of recruitment innovation. They never fail to see a trend, and most importantly, they are never afraid to adapt their recruitment strategies and practices accordingly.
Ignorant: These organizations directly oppose the influencers by remaining utterly oblivious to trends. These teams refuse to acknowledge changes in the recruitment space, and as a result, they fail to adapt their practices and hire top talent.
Involved: Between both of these extremes is a happy middle where most organizations exist. While these organizations and recruitment teams don’t influence trends, they do their best to keep track of them and anticipate future ones. In some cases, they even use these insights to improve their business and recruitment practices.
For evidence of how much these categories matter, consider how they are related to the ways companies were affected by the challenges of 2020.
Organizations that were ignorant of emerging recruitment trends and hiring data struggled to adapt to our increasingly digital world. On the other hand, influencers like Slack and DocuSign were able to adjust to the pandemic and tailor their hiring strategies accordingly. In recent months, these organizations have even increased their hiring efforts, lending further credence to predictions of a forthcoming “Great Re-Hire.” Finally, involved organizations were able to weather the early challenges of layoffs and budget cuts and are now primed to take advantage of new trends in 2021.
To help all recruitment teams succeed in the coming year, we gathered insights from 350 talent acquisition professionals across multiple industries. All of the insights can be found in our 2021 Recruitment Outlook Report, but here are five that stood out to us the most.
Trend 1: The Great Re-Hire
As you’re reading this sentence, organizations worldwide are preparing for an all-out war for talent. FlexJob’s list of the top 100 companies with remote jobs this year is filled with influencer organizations who can now expand their reaches beyond their geographic footprints to attract even more job seekers. Talent acquisition professionals across the board are rightfully wary of imminent employer competition in 2021, especially when it means going head-to-head with key industry players.
When it comes to getting ahead of your competition, having the right data at your fingertips is mission-critical. Luckily, as hiring activity surges this year, so will the recruitment technology market. When you have the right tools in place, your research on the current candidate market should help you answer all the right questions before diving into talent sourcing, including: Who are your top competitors? Where are they located? Why should your candidates pick you over them?
There’s no reason to lose top talent to your competitors if you’re bolstering your hiring process with accurate analytics and reporting to guide your decisions in critical times.
Trend 2: On Your Mark. Get Get. Source!
As the competition for top talent heats up, you better believe recruitment teams will spend more time sourcing in 2021. However, there’s a big difference between sourcing and sourcing smartly.
While many teams will be glued to one sourcing channel, smart teams will look to diversify the channels used to find and engage candidates in an age of remote work. As tempting as it is to swim through a sea of eager job seekers on LinkedIn, 2021 will be the year recruiters break away from typical social media recruiting.
Why? Because if all your candidates are on the internet waiting to be found, it’s unlikely that they’ll all be active in the same place. Smart teams will leverage a more holistic model, reaching out to candidates on social media sites beyond LinkedIn. Professional tech platforms, vertical job boards, and even those past applicants deep in your archives who were just a hair away from getting the job all those months ago are all potent sources of great talent.
Trend 3: Repairing Your Relationship With Your ATS
You don’t have to be Dr. Phil to see the problems between recruiters and their ATSs. With their inflexibility, navigational difficulties, and outdated data systems by today’s technological standards, ATSs are in dire need of a major overhaul.
With 96 percent of recruiters looking to source existing talent in their ATSs or CRMs, organizations will have to invest in a recruitment model that allows teams to easily access and update past database records without hours of administrative system housekeeping. As you pick your recruitment technology in the 2020s, prioritize seamless integrations with ATS/CRM providers to reduce operational friction when enriching outdated data to uncover a past candidate’s current qualifications.
For decades, hiring teams struggled to adjust legacy systems to meet their rapid pace. Trust us when we tell you it’s no longer a problem.
Trend 4: Embracing Social Media Recruitment Marketing
Influencer organizations like Salesforce have long used social media to communicate their support of social causes and interact with employees and candidates. Many recruiters in 2021 will also use social media to engage with candidates more conversationally and directly.
When embracing social media engagement, organizations will have to keep a few important factors in mind. Firstly, organizations will have to consider the optimal ways to interact with different generations of social media users, from millennials and Generation X-ers to Generation Z-ers, who are digital natives.
Recruiters will also have to find ways to monitor candidate engagement, especially when working with a remote team across multiple platforms. Finally, successful global outreach and engagement with candidates and consumers alike requires getting the tone of your branding messages right.
Trend 5: Intentional Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Hiring
Here’s some good news: More than 85 percent of talent acquisition professionals plan to prioritize D&I recruitment initiatives this year. However, there’s a big difference between prioritizing D&I and putting intentional initiatives into action. How will you stop planning and start doing?
Recruiters can play a more prominent role in the push for intentional D&I initiatives by using recruitment technology to show executives and stakeholders real data that backs bigger decisions. Slack is one organization that has made a concerted effort to critically reflect on the inclusivity of its organizational language, existing biases, and diversity bottlenecks during the interview process.
But remember: You can’t identify tangible problems if you’re not systematically tracking your efforts. Get those hard numbers to show leaders where investments in diversity should be made, and don’t wait to find the necessary tools to help you get there.
Preparing for Possibilities
If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that life can be very unpredictable. It’s impossible to map out the future accurately, but we shouldn’t stop preparing for what’s possible. In the new year, recruitment teams (regardless of their histories as influencers, involved, or ignorant) have a unique opportunity to identify trends, adapt their recruitment practices, and find ways to accomplish their talent acquisition goals.
For more recruitment trends and analysis, read Hiretual’s full 2021 Recruitment Outlook Report.
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