The top 5 trends affecting recruitment right now

‘To truly influence business decisions, you need to understand where the industry is going’.

The recruitment industry has experienced an interesting start to 2017, with an increased focus on maximising talent analytics and leveraging untapped hiring sources playing key roles in the sector’s direction. While a few of the previous year’s trends have been carried through to this year, there are a number of new recruitment practices that are currently trending.

So, what changes can companies expect in the coming months? What trends will have an impact on recruitment? And, most importantly, how can companies differentiate themselves from competitors to attract and retain the best talent going forwards?

Repairing the candidate experience

Till date, companies have focused more on the idea of creating exceptional market experiences to increase customer loyalty with existing clients and expand their market share by attracting new ones. However, the coming months will see companies making more of an effort to improve their candidate-centric experiences. Businesses are beginning to realise that a poor candidate experience can adversely impact their reputation, affect the quality of their talent pools and result in a loss of potential revenue.

Candidate experience, when done right, can be an effective marketing tool to drive referrals – from both a new employee and new customer perspective. Virgin Media, for example, devised new ways to improve their candidate experience and, as a result, made a significant impact on their bottom-line through a reduction in lost subscriptions from rejected candidates and the impact their word of mouth had on family and friends.

The rise of the gig economy

Gig economies have started to have a major impact on the future of workplaces and are becoming increasingly popular among millennial professionals. We are witnessing a new trend of blended workforce, where full-time professionals are working side by side with part-timers and freelancers.

In a fast-paced and highly tech-driven business environment, freelancers offer companies access to a diverse pool of talent from around the world without the cost implications – such as healthcare costs, pensions and national insurance – associated with a salaried member of staff. Freelancers also offer specific subject expertise (that you may not have access to in-house) and can be used only as and when the need arises. So, whilst both permanent and contract workers have their benefits, to keep pace with the economy, businesses need to effectively manage both freelancers and their traditional workforce.

An increased emphasis on employer branding

One of the fundamentals of business growth centres on organisations being proactive in their marketing/communication strategies if they want to attract the best talent. But what messages do they need to be sending? Candidates today don’t see money as the be-all and end-all while seeking jobs; they have a much broader view of what constitutes a great brand to work for. Companies, therefore, need to increase their focus on other benefits, over and above salary, that potential candidates are looking for – work culture, employee protection, job security, personal development and so on. To be able to achieve this, organisations need a comprehensive and technology-driven branding strategy if they are to attract and retain star candidates.

Recent research by LinkedIn highlighted that 59% of companies were investing more in their corporate branding in 2017 compared to last year, signalling an increased emphasis and investment in their brand’s reputation over and above the usual fundamentals of employment such as salary and holiday entitlement.

Investing more in employee referral programmes

“Going into 2017 I can see hiring volumes continuing to grow and a subsequent move by employers to push for employee referrals as a sourcing focus in order to control increasing costs” – James Nathan, founder of The James Nathan Experience.

Leveraging the power of such programmes first requires a contented and engaged workforce. Why? Your employees will only recommend your business to others if they enjoy working for you themselves. Using existing members of staff to evaluate if their acquaintances would be a good fit for your organisation is an effective way to quickly reach out to a pool of suitable candidates. In addition, incorporating a good employee recognition programme can work wonders in making your employees feel valued, content and motivated to recommend your business.

Promoting diversity

The current focus on increasing diversity in the workplace will continue to have a considerable impact on the recruitment industry. With giants like Google and Facebook developing diversity specific measures, bringing in new Heads of Diversity and introducing new tactics to ensure a diverse workforce, it is clearly time for other companies to follow suit. If your organisation is growing across borders, then diversity will inevitably become a key part of your recruitment strategy.

“I believe that piggybacking off the 2016 trend, diversity in recruiting will still be a main focus. Most large companies already have diversity and inclusion programmes in place. What the data and studies are continuing to show is that diverse teams perform better. Companies that are capitalising on diversity have shown that not hiding from our differences but highlighting them and working together increased productivity.” – Jason Vogel, PwC

Research suggests that this year is going to be one of constant change, or let us say, ‘better approaches’, which will redefine the recruitment process. At TalentSpa, we can help set up your business for the future by incorporating these insights and recruiting motivated millennial talent. Our recruitment software with a built in applicant tracking system helps you to hire the right candidates for every role. Having helped over 2500 organisations, we can help you too.