If you’re in recruiting today, your job will be very different in two years even if you keep the same job.

Here are 5 predictions related to the evolution of our industry:

1) The Talent Market will Continue to be Candidate-Driven

The “candidate focused” strategy will continue over the next few years. And that means the continued growth of recruitment marketing and inbound recruitment in particular. Candidate experience and the relevance of your employer brand will be more important than before.

Already now, four things are important:

• Having a blog, watching, hosting, attending webinars or events are important.
• Improving SEO efforts and company positioning will allow candidates to find you easily.
• Growing a long term candidate nurturing strategy to find top talents.
• Social listening and competitive studies are important to analyze and overcome your competitors.

Globally, and particularly in tech fields, there are more openings than qualified candidates to fill them.  That means your focus as a recruiter will be 80% of the workforce that’s not actively seeking a new job at the moment. And targeting “passive job seekers” is what will power this continued candidate focus as well as the need for a solid Recruitment Marketing strategy for any company hoping to stay better than competitors.

2) Recruitment Marketing Automation tools usage will increase

The assistance in marketing the employer brand and guiding the candidate’s experience is what automation can provide and it is now becoming essential. More and more, specialists are realizing that Recruitment Marketing automation is the way to spread the word. According to Linkedin, it’s estimated that 75% of job seekers research potential employers before even making contact with the company directly, that’s why having a strong employer brand and showing it, is imperative.

The ability to personalize communications, schedule posts in advance, and monitor your social media presence from a unified dashboard are just the top three reasons for implementing a Recruitment Marketing Automation solution.

Personalization lets candidates know that you value them as individuals, scheduled posts tell your audience that you value their time and want them to get the value of your content consistently, and social media monitoring is absolutely essential for engaging with your audience and responding to their questions in a timely manner.

3) AI and Advanced Analytics Tools will Emerge as key to Recruiting Success

Technologies like Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics will continue to break into the recruiting world. With the increasing adoption of technology, particularly automation, comes an increasing amount of data. The ability to analyze data will become imperative to make the right recruiting decisions.

Every new system you set-up will bring your candidates’ information from contact details, locations or experience. This combination of data can provide invaluable asset into how to best target future marketing campaigns, improve your workforce and present the values in your company.

It’s certain that  AI-powered analytics that will be capable of extracting all of this data and make it easier for you to use these metrics to refine your strategy to better target just the right people, in just the right place, and at just the right time.

4) Better tools and tech will be key to boosting your recruiting team’s performance

According to a survey given by Linkedin, you can see the best ways to improve a recruiter’s performance over the next five years. Most of the people are adding flexible work options and offer training opportunities which would be effective but the number one answer is about investing in better recruiting tools and technology.

Source: Linkedin

The technology won’t replace recruiters, but it will reduce busy work juggling and it will save time. For example, video interviewing (with multiple questions) is a simple but good example.

It can help you reduce your recruitment processing time: one video instead of three contacts with a candidate.

Adding any new technology can lead to challenges in implementation and adoption. Rest assured, Recruiters should and will say what they think about the tools they’ll use, but one thing is sure, they want to be efficient.

5) Recruiters will bring more strategy to the business

Many recruiters still work around executing a few simple tasks, like sourcing, interviewing, or closing candidates. It is one thing to execute a hiring plan, but it’s quite another to design the hiring plan. In the future, companies will ask recruiters to do more, which includes having a vision on potential impact. Solving problems, general business management and global thinking will be as important as your daily routine of a recruiter.

Already now, at the highest levels of Talent Acquisition teams, more than 35% come from a role outside of the Human resources area. So, those new talent leaders are able to decide in a much better way how and when they are likely to increase the team.

For sure, Businesses will need recruiters who do more: engaging with passive candidates, analyzing talent data and a must-be-ready attitude to think globally, being a master in new technologies to perform well in the future.

I am John Murat, founder of Talent Cloud Media and several other companies in the HR space. Originally from France, I moved to Ireland in 1995, became a witness of the rise of Ireland. Assisted many multinationals set-up and expand across Europe. Keen innovator in Human Resources, the positive impact of Artificial Intelligence on our industry and the goals we must set to achieve a much needed improved industry, servicing businesses who need their Talent to function so they can grow and expand.
Contact me to discuss further how technology can improve us: John@talentcloudm.com