With the ever-evolving technological landscape and increasingly competitive workplaces, organizations today are recognizing the fact that ‘right talent’ is the primary requirement to execute their business strategies successfully. And to serve this purpose, a high-performing talent acquisition function, that clearly maps out the goals and priorities for the year and effectively ties them to their organization’s strategic plan and goals, is a must-have. 

Recruitment today requires a lot of thought and creativity. In the current candidate-driven job market, recruiters need to go the extra mile in order to find the right talent for their organization. Also, being aware of the current trends in the recruitment space is a great way of helping recruitment managers lead their strategy successfully.

Here we are discussing the top 6 recruiting trends for 2020 that will shape the industry in the coming years.

The Need to Embrace Technology 

A recent research report on the state of talent acquisition-2019 by Mettl suggests that technology is used most in the sourcing of the candidates.

The data clearly shows the importance of adapting technology to meet the growing demands of the workforce and how it can assist businesses in recruiting, retaining, and managing their human capital in a much better way.

Data Analytics

A successful recruiting strategy nowadays is largely defined by the metrics-how the team performs now, and how would the company like it to perform in the future?

One of the primary focuses of the talent acquisition industry, therefore, is (and will be!) on how businesses make use of data and harness the power of data analytics in the sector to gain the deep insights necessary to improve their hiring strategies. 

As per LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends 2018, almost 50% of hiring professionals, in fact, use big data as part of their strategy, which has both helped them immensely with talent acquisition and improved their techniques & hiring metrics, such as time, cost, and quality of hire.

The Growing Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Recruitment

Although AI in recruitment space isn’t completely a new concept, applications of AI will become even more widespread in the future.

AI is becoming an irreplaceable tool for every recruiter; it can be used in multiple areas from automated candidate sourcing, creating screening, the value proposition for employees to hiring remote workers, the scope of AI in recruitment is on an all-time high.

Recruitment Automation Tools

Although the automation of the recruiting process has been around for some time now, it is much more than just HRIS, recruitment marketing software and Applicant Tracking System (ATS) now. The increased focus on automation is completely shifting the way organizations think about HR and recruiting processes. Research by PWC shows that more than 40 percent of HR functions for companies today use automation and other AI-driven applications. 

Robotic process automation (a form of AI) is the new tool used by companies in talent acquisition for completely automating business processes to enhance efficiency and effectiveness, making workers much more productive. Utilizing bots to replicate human actions for time-consuming administrative tasks, RPA can help optimize recruitment initiatives through the automation of tasks such as candidate sourcing, screening, sending automated communication to prospects and much more.

Candidate Engagement

In today’s time, candidate engagement through data-driven insights and gamification has become a main priority for the organizations. Gamification is, in fact, helping talent managers increase employee engagement and train their workforce much more efficiently. This has also helped organizations in terms of retaining talent for a much longer time.

Gig Hiring

Factors such as rising labour costs and a dearth of available workers have compelled hiring managers and companies to seek new options such as Gig hiring when it comes to recruiting. More and more businesses have started using gig economy services through various online labour platforms.

A recent report by Nasscom, FICCI, and EY suggests that the gig economy (or freelancing) is providing excellent employment opportunities to creative and multimedia professionals, online sales and marketing professionals, translators, writers, and other data entry operators. This kind of employment model is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.

Contract Employment

Contract employment or contract staffing is another area that is going to impact the talent acquisition industry significantly in the coming years. 

Contract staffing is a new recruitment model that is flexible enough to address the immediate talent needs of an organization while mitigating financial risk. To leverage this model successfully, companies need to capitalize on qualified TA managers/recruiting agencies and their expertise to source, screen, and place top talent as per the need.

Last Thoughts

The last few years have seen the role of talent acquisition managers change dramatically.  Technology has been the major disrupter of the recruitment industry, prompting a change in candidate mindset and making it essential for recruiters to stay abreast with the latest trends shaping the recruitment industry as a whole.

The trends and methods discussed here are the need of the hour, and, if implemented effectively, can take your recruiting strategy to a whole new level.

References

Top 10 Hot Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technologies

2018 NORTH AMERICAN STAFFING & RECRUITING TRENDS REPORT

Global Recruiting Trends 2016

Staffing Industry Analysts, 2018