The Future of Recruiting

This report offers 17 predictions to help recruitment and talent leaders to be strategic, adaptable and in-tune with talent industry trends

Compiled from dozens of interviews with talent leaders globally and thousands of recruitment professionals, we try and make sense of the current economic uncertainty we're experiencing in 2023 and how can we tackle the main issues that we’re facing in talent acquisition and staffing.

This article was originally published in full by LinkedIn

Recruiting professionals have never been able to make a bigger impact than right now. You used to be able to say, ‘these hires helped our company.’ Now you can say, ‘I changed the make-up of our company, I changed where we work, I changed what we look for, and I changed how we hire.

VP of Global TA, Engineering at Microsoft

The Role of Recruiting

There is an opportunity right now for recruiting professionals to make a huge impact on their organisations, changing what they look for and how they choose to hire.

Recruiting will drive business-critical changes – it is becoming more and more strategic. Recruiting teams will have more say over remuneration packages, including pay.

Recruitment consultants need a more strategic set of soft skills to be successful.

The list of top 5 skills includes problem solving and business acumen. Those with these skills see far more opportunity for promotion. There is a need to think on the fly and navigate the talent short market that we find ourselves in.

Compensation ranked #1 globally for candidates, however, less than 50% of talent teams say their companies have increased salary bandings to keep pace with inflation, let alone their competition.

Generative AI (GAI) will let recruiters focus on the human part of hiring. Automating repetitive takes, generating content, drafting job specifications and personalising messages to candidates. Leverage these tools on the right things in order to prioritise more strategic work will make things easier and faster to source candidates and engage them.

Good recruiters bring the opportunity and the company to life. It’s more than just a list of benefits and a salary.

For the foreseeable future of recruiting, humans will still play an essential role. Humanness still matters, especially for hard-to-fill jobs, and the core of that is empathy. A good recruiter brings the opportunity and company to life, beyond what a person can see on a website or job description.

SVP, Workforce Advisory & Digital Strategy at Randstad

Economic Uncertainty

Candidate diversity remains highly important even in an uncertain talent market.

69% of recruiting professionals say that the market is negatively impacting hiring, yet 74% say that it is not lowering their priority of DEI inclusive hiring strategy.

It is very important to Gen-Z candidates to know what a company’s purpose is and how they are tackling issues surrounding DEI hiring.

DEI is a priority to the next generation of employees. Their expectation is to see leaders who look like them and to know organizations are committed to DEI long-term — not only during times of social crisis.

DEI Strategist

Contractor hiring brings flexibility in this uncertain market – businesses need to be able to scale up and down more flexibly. The US is leading the way in terms of contract hiring growth – 26% growth YoY continued in 2022. Often the UK follows similar trends so this is something to watch out for.

As companies reduce recruiting capacity, the opportunity for staffing companies goes up. Recruitment agencies can be that flexible option for companies to use when they want to scale up and down – they don’t need to have a salaried team on board – we can do that for them as a recruitment partner.

Good pay, balance, and flexibility — they’re essential and we absolutely provide that. But honestly, it’s not what makes us stand out. In today’s job market, offering those benefits is expected. In our employer branding, we prefer to emphasize what makes us unique.

SVP, Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Siemens

Employer Branding

Recruitment professionals expect employer branding will undergo an increased investment in 2023 to combat the fact that expectations lead us to believe that the job market will be more favourable to candidates and employees in the next 5 years than employers.

Every employee is an opportunity to reflect your employer brand. Using LinkedIn job slots, rotating them, ensuring brand awareness is out there, getting the teams to post, like, share and do the small things regularly. It is not the time to hide away – you need to double down on this.

Authentic branding and voice is key to attracting good people. What makes companies stand out needs to be more than just what they offer – they need to be unique. The topics that are most important to candidates are:

Compensation
Work-life balance
Flexible working arrangements
Advancement
Skill Development

There is a disconnect between what some staffing professionals think candidates value and what they actually do value. We assume too much.

For Gen-Z – born later than 1996. They will value development and diversity – these are priorities. Millennials and Gen Z are more likely to move around more often as well, so CVs from these generations are often pre-judged for this - there may need to be a shift in expectations from employers.

How do we get better at filtering in, not filtering out? Recruiters have been trained to copy and paste a job description so they can hire really, really fast. They’re not really looking at what the work requires and what skills are needed. That’s starting to change.

VP, Head of Global Talent Innovation & Skills Transformation at Capgemini

Skills First Hiring

Skills have become a critical currently – staffing firms need to have greater visibility on what skills candidates have.

How do we get better at filtering in rather than filtering out?

76% of recruitment professionals say skills-first hiring will become a priority for their organisations in the next 18 months. This is all about looking at alternative backgrounds or avenues to hire for talent – which in turn promotes diversity and inclusion. Looking at those who don’t have degrees but still have the skills to do the role is a basic example of this.

For example, in the US over the last 6 months there has been a 30% increase in roles being advertised that don’t require a degree.

How can you get your customers thinking differently about hiring and who they are hiring as well?

Internal mobility will be a multiyear journey for many companies, but you can also build shorter-term wins along the way. Looking at your internal policies to make sure they align with your vision for talent mobility, that’s something organizations can do now.

VP, Global Talent Acquisition at LinkedIn

Internal Mobility & Upskilling

Creating a culture of learning and development is key to ensuring your hiring strategy is successful moving forwards.

If employers are committed to internal promotion, staff are likely to stay 60% longer with that business.

Your next hire might already be on the payroll!

Upskilling will also be a key tool for retaining a diverse workforce – it is a key strategy to advancing diversity and inclusion in all areas of a business.

Change is coming to the world of recruiting, and you won't want to be a passive observer. As a talent leader, you’re in a position to reshape the way your clients work, take advantage.