From technology as a facilitator to zoning in on the human element when resolving hiring challenges, 2018 recruitment trends will tip towards boosting the human factor and ultimately making the hiring and interview process more efficient.
2017 was the year of AI and automation technologies, workplace diversity and candidate experience in recruiting, but what acceleration and shift of trends does 2018 have in store?
Social Media
According to Aberdeen Group, the best companies are 32% more likely to engage candidates via social media, with astute recruiters choosing to go beyond Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat, to reach all demographics.
Using social media for recruitment means a wider reach, and 79% of candidates are turning to social media for job search activities, as well as sharing jobs on social media.
Social media allows for another dimension to the company, and strengthens the brand as there is opportunity for plenty of engagement. This leads to reviews, and statistics from Glassdoor tell us that job seekers typically look at six reviews prior to forming an opinion on a company.
AI
Gartner predicts that by 2030, 50% of high-performing employees will regularly and seamlessly redistribute workloads across personalised portfolios of talent bots.
LinkedIn research from 9,000 global recruiter participants, revealed that 67% say AI helps save time. 43% claimed it removed human bias and 31% suggested it delivered better candidate matches.
“By killing unnecessary transactions through technology and collected data, teams will have more time to build candidate relationships and think about how to win talent,” the research from LinkedIn revealed.
Mobile
According to Glassdoor, 89% of job seekers say their mobile device is an important tool for job searching, with 45% using it to search for jobs at least once a day. There are now more mobiles on the planet than people, so this tool cannot be ignored by recruitment companies.
To stay in line with competition, the website and job searching functionalities need to be fully mobile optimised on career sites, to keep up with candidates high expectations. Usability and speed is attractive, and if your website runs slowly, job seekers will move on to the next available site.
PageUp revealed that 16% of submitted applications come via a mobile device, so mobile-enabled application processes will reap the rewards.
AR & VR
While video remains an important part of various types of recruitment, augmented and virtual reality are likely to grow in importance in 2018 for recruiters and candidates.
VR gives HR the ability to put the candidate in a difficult situation (virtually) and see how they can handle it, instead of simply relying on their answer for example to the question of “how do you react to a difficult situation?”
As well as being to learn more about candidates, the technology can also be used to show and teach the candidates about what a day in the life of the company is like, or even gives them the chance to interview in a totally different setting of the recruiters choice.
Candidate experience
According to the LinkedIn report, video interviews, or meeting candidates in a casual environment, are becoming popular alternatives to the traditional interview format, and that switching this up gives a better opportunity to size up a candidates soft skills and get a realistic snapshot of their personalities.
For the candidate experience, this more relaxed approach is more likely to help them feel relaxed and hopefully be more open. Great candidate experience is an important differentiator, and this means care is needed during every contact at all steps in the recruitment process.
Recruitment sometimes has a bad reputation as having slow, outdated practices and being unfriendly to candidates, so to set yourself apart from the rest, firms can adopt chatbots for efficient communication in the early stages.
In a survey by Allegis, 66% of candidates reported to be comfortable with a chatbot taking care of interview scheduling and preparation, if it means speeding up the job search process and having access to more information.
Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library, said: “The labour market is constantly changing and keeping on top of the latest trends is important if you want to ensure success in the future.”
