2016 Recruitment Trends – Part 1

As a career psychologist, I also undertake some recruitment consultancy. I need to keep up to date with latest trends. How many of these are you aware of?

1. Data based decision making

Too many recruiters collect data but fail to use it effectively. Recruiters are beginning to identify the words and phrases that attract candidates; the interview questions that differentiate the top performers; checking the effectiveness of references in predicting performance; failure rate (the average of people not staying in the job is 46%!) and which single factor has the highest impact on hiring success.

As a job seeker, make sure that your marketing material - your CV and LinkedIn profile - use the words that will attract the recruiter. You can do this through a careful review of the advert and other company literature and also being clear on what makes you different. You don’t want to be a clone of everyone else.

2. Referrals will become 50% of all hiring

The best firms get 50% of new recruits from employee referrals. Companies will be explaining to their staff on how to make good connections and who to refer. And this will not just be with their close business associates but their broader network. HR can give feedback to employees on the quality of their referrals and to make sure they can accurately assess the quality of their work and skills.

As a job seeker you need to expand your network, but it’s not just connecting to more and more people, but making sure you have a relationship with them and they understand where your strengths lie. Talking with them but also creating long posts on LinkedIn (like this one!) can help, so too can sharing relevant articles and web links so you are seen as a thought leader. Let people know what you are looking for and why you will be ideal for a particular role. When you see a job advertised, go through your network and see who you know that works for the particular organisation.

3. Measuring on the job performance of the new hire

Recruiters will be monitoring new recruits and dividing them between high performers and the below average performers. Then to look for the traits that the high performers share. This is part of job analysis that occupational psychologists have done for years. But alas, many organisations have not wanted to invest in this work.

As a job seeker you can do your research and identify the key traits of star performers and see how you measure up. When you get the job you can also seek feedback, perhaps getting support from a mentor to get you into the high performer group.

4. Increased speed of hire

Recruitment can be slow, months can go by with long drawn out selection processes and the best applicant may have got an offer elsewhere. But it can also impact on the bottom line if a vacancy results in less revenue generation. It is not true that the longer it takes to make a decision the better the quality of the hire. Too often the delay is because the process hasn’t been carefully planned and too many people needing to be involved and are slow to respond. Companies may choose to rank the speed of decision making internally to encourage people to speed up, probably through the embarrassment of being at the bottom of the list.

This is outside our control, there is little we can do as candidates, but we can ask for when we will hear and follow up accordingly. We can also let the recruiter know that we have other applications progressing.

5. Applications to be done via mobile

Not everyone has a laptop, and we do far more activity on our phones and tablets. Recruitment must be possible by these means, to enable us to apply for jobs and accept job offers using mobile technology. Interviews could be scheduled online. Texting can also be a great means of getting in touch with candidates.

We should all have an up-to-date CV accessible to forward via our phones/tablets.

6. The costs of a bad candidate experience

If an applicant feels that the recruitment process was poor they will tell others, in person and via social media, and may even encourage others not to buy the organisations products. Recruiters can contact past applicants and new hires and get feedback about what they liked/ disliked about the process. They could also use a mystery shopper process. Glass Door can also provide feedback.

As a company will look for details of us online we too can find out more about the company we may consider working with. Seek feedback from ex-employees via LinkedIn and use Glassdoor.com

So how many of these trends are you aware of? Will you be making any changes?

I’ll be posting part 2 next week.

Denise Taylor, Career Psychologist and Award Winning Career Coach with www.amazingpeople.co.uk. My next book, Find Work at 50+ will be published on 1 March 2016