Digital disruption, coupled with the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, has impacted almost every organization. The result is an ever-widening skills gap, and an elevated quit rate. This has forced businesses to re-examine their approach to recruitment and hiring, in order to continue to identify and retain top talent.
Modern recruiting necessarily means letting go of outdated and ineffective practices and confronting the challenges of hiring, employee onboarding, and retention.
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Recruitment Trends to Look Out For
This perfect storm has given birth to some highly effective recruiting trends, which are now mainstream practices in many industries. Consider these recruitment best practices:
Leverage the Power of AI
The modern workforce has begun to grasp the full, comprehensive power of Artificial Intelligence. According to Gartner’s 2019 Artificial Intelligence Survey, 17% of organizations use AI-based solutions in their HR function at the time of the study; now more than 30% are leveraging the functionality.
Organizations increasingly leverage AI to optimize company information, identifying the best candidate from publicly available data, using chatbots to engage with candidates during the recruitment process, screening and assessing candidates, and so on.
In the simplest terms, AI automates cumbersome and repetitive tasks while adding a touch of personalization. It offers valuable insight into the efficiency of the recruitment process, enabling organizations to prioritize quality. It also helps recruiters to carefully analyze voluminous data and remove bias from the process of shortlisting candidates.
With AI handling repetitive tasks, recruiters and HR managers are free to focus on candidate care, experience, and other aspects of the job that necessitate human attention and interface. Businesses that disregard the benefit of automation are likely to lose candidates to their tech-savvy competitors.
Enable Digital Onboarding
Attracting and hiring top candidates is just part of the process. Once a candidate is interviewed, screened, and selected, he or she needs assistance with onboarding and settling in. It’s the organization’s responsibility to streamline the process for them.
If a candidate’s onboarding experience is dissatisfying, it might demotivate them, hinder their progress, or, in a worst-case scenario, compel them to quit.
Digital onboarding platforms streamline and standardize the onboarding process. They increase compliance and save time ensuring that all new candidates benefit from a consistent employee experience. These platforms also assist new hires in familiarizing themselves with their roles, thereby boosting their immediate productivity.
Use Data-Driven Analytics
Another hot trend in recruiting is using data-driven analytics. As a matter of example, HR departments formulate hiring strategies based on data gathered from recruitment platforms and ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems).
HR analytics allows the recruitment team to gain insight into hiring strategies and further optimize aspects of the business which are functioning well, in addition to those needing improvement.
The proper use of HR analytics can improve key hiring metrics. Data-driven recruitment has the potential to drive the entire talent lifecycle as organizations continue to use people analytics for improving their recruitment strategy.
Hire for Soft Sills
As reported by Global Talent Crunch, the present talent shortage in the United States is likely to create eighty-five million unfilled roles and approximately $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenue. If left unaddressed, this talent crisis will inevitably shift the global economic balance.
As a strategy to combat the crisis and fill the widespread deficit, recruiters are now hiring for all industries with soft skills top of mind. Not surprisingly, most new jobs created in the future lean heavily on soft skills, including communication, collaboration, and problem-solving. Consequently, recruiters are increasingly focused on skills-based hiring.
This provides opportunities to a large pool of potential employees who might otherwise have been excluded as a result of a lack of professional or educational credentials.
Create and Maintain Internal Talent Pools
Recruiters utilize different approaches to find and source top talent externally. What’s often missing from the recruitment strategy is the utilization of an internal talent pool. With skill deficits and talent shortages on the rise, businesses are forced to search for talent from within their own workplaces.
Offering internal employees the opportunity to fill current vacancies helps them grow professionally, but it also cements their loyalty to the company at large.
In today’s labor market, utilizing internal talent pools is a practical approach to solving staffing shortages. No business can afford to lose its current resources; most especially when competitors are hunting for the same talent.
Building and nurturing an internal talent pool drastically reduces recruitment costs and the time to hire while ensuring quality retention.
Embrace CRM-based Recruitment
In the recruitment space, CRM refers to Candidate Relationship Management. One of the most pressing issues in HR today is the difficulty in attracting top talent. As candidate needs are predominantly driving today’s talent acquisition trends, HR experts believe that using CRM platforms is a strategic approach to optimizing hiring.
CRM is a structured process of maintaining a positive and healthy relationship with past, current, and future candidates, cultivating a ready-made talent pool. CRM-based hiring allows recruiters to build strong, lasting connections with qualified candidates.
Employers are subsequently able to build, maintain and grow targeted personnel pipelines in order to satisfy short-term and long-term business objectives.
Conclusion
Businesses across the globe have faced plenty of uncertainty since the onset of the pandemic and the resulting shifts in economic conditions. These recruitment trends will help them capitalize on key opportunities, engage the right people, retain the best talent, and build a competent workforce in challenging times.
