The future of recruiting

In this week’s Hiring Highlights, we pit recruiters against investors in a battle royale to determine who talks the most sense. Plus we share some essential podcast insights from DEI leader Joahanna G. Thomas.

The Future of Recruiting 2023

If you read anything this week, check out LinkedIn’s report titled The Future of Recruiting 2023, which includes 17 predictions from talent leaders on the topsy-turvy year ahead.

There are plenty of insights from the report to suggest that recruiting is going to drive business critical changes. As Brett Baumoel, VP of Global TA (Engineering) at Microsoft, is quoted as saying: “Recruiting professionals have never been able to make a bigger impact than right now.”

In this newsletter we’ll be dipping in and out of the report like a bear with a honey jar. Let’s explore some of the main predictions.

“Skills-first hiring will become the gold standard”

Last time around we covered the merits of skills-based hiring, and it turns out that great minds think alike, because LinkedIn have covered this exact same trend in their report.

Among the recruiting pros polled, 75% predict that skills-first hiring will be a priority for their company in the next 18 months.

Employers are also less bothered than ever before about whether a candidate has been to Yale, jail, or drank pale ale.

“Business leaders will recognize the value of filling open roles with homegrown talent”

We’ve covered the importance of internal hiring before, and according to the LinkedIn report, “75% of recruiting pros say internal recruiting will be an important factor shaping the future recruiting over the next five years”.

At the same time, “employers may increasingly rely on contingent talent, like contractors or gig workers, whose labour can be scaled up and down on demand”.

Promoting from within – alongside a healthy mix of contractor talent – may prove to be a successful way of keeping morale high with a dynamic skills mix.

It’s easy to pull the firing trigger, but there’s an interesting word of warning from Dare Obasanjo, who observed that layoffs – while a tempting option for that stock market bounce – can lead to a “sense of betrayal” among the staff who remain.

“Companies will keep a closer eye on what candidates want most”

We can talk about employer branding ‘till the cows come home, and the report finds that a majority of recruiters (64%) believe the future of recruiting will be more favourable to candidates and employees than employers.

“Recruiting will double down on employer branding as talent regains leverage,” the report states. “The labour market remains tight, and talent is expected to retain the upper hand over the next five years.”

“That’s why refining and conveying a clear, compelling employer value proposition (EVP) is more important than ever.”

The investor perspective

By way of comparison, it’s fascinating to see whether the warm and fuzzy aspirations of recruiter-land bear any resemblance to investor sentiment. The answer? Get ready for some flesh-eating robots to devour everything in sight.

Last week, we covered Mark Zuckerberg’s open letter to staff in which he heralded a “Year of Efficiency” where “people will be more productive and their work will be more fun and fulfilling” (if they still have a job).

In his Investment Talk Substack, ‘An Open Letter to Every Company in Tech’, Conor Mac seems to agree that Meta’s hiring growth was more bloated than a football hooligan after ten pints.

Regarding Zuckerberg’s open letter to staff, Conor writes that “Zuckerberg demonstrates how effortlessly payroll can get out of hand; which inevitably leads to indirect costs”, before adding: “Never ending layers of hierarchy increase latency and reduce accountability.”

“The road to mediocrity”

Elsewhere, Ravi Gupta offers some hard truths on the dangers of complacent startups that think they’ve hit the big time just because they “have a lot of runway…with 3-4 years of cash”.

“It’s dangerous because it allows you to have standards that prioritize feelings over performance. This is a path to mediocrity.”

“What matters is moving your company towards excellence,” Ravi writes. “Don’t let a long runway lower the bar for your company. High standards are a gift that you give your team.”

Ravi even shared an African proverb via Bill Gurley, just in case you feel like gnashing your teeth into an antelope.

And seeing how everyone loves an open letter, it would be remiss not to recall Brad Gerstner’s October 2022 letter to Mark Zuckerberg in which her warned that it was “time to get fit”.

“Meta has drifted into the land of excess – too many people, too many ideas, too little urgency,” wrote Brad, a Meta shareholder no less.

Brad called for Meta to reduce its headcount expenses by at least 20%, and of course, he ultimately got his wish.

Lots to mull over, then. The LinkedIn report gives us a fascinating glimpse of future HR trends, but equally, we should remember that those who control the pursestrings will inevitably call the shots. And of course, LinkedIn have an incentive to create a report that makes their customers (recruiters) happy, as they make billions a year from them.

Either way, perhaps we should be wary of a world where recruiters become too reliant on LinkedIn. As one person asks, ‘why is LinkedIn so cringe?’

Podcast: why diversity matters, and makes sense

Whether we’re in for a cost-cutting dystopia or a recruitment resurgence, a key unanswered question is whether businesses will live up to their commitments on diversity and inclusion. Is it the case, as Dare Obasanjo, lead product manager at Meta, memorably put it, that “companies caring about DEI was a zero interest rate phenomenon”? 

There is no better person to explore these issues than Joahanna G. Thomas, the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Epidemics Sound, and we were delighted to catch up with Joahanna for latest Scaling Stories podcast.

The good news is that according to LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting report: “Three out of four [recruiters] say that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring is not being deprioritized – in fact, nearly 20% say it’s a higher priority now.”

But that doesn’t always ring true, and for any businesses that don’t instinctively value diversity, Joahanna explains how DEI principles are not simply just – but common sense.

“If they can only understand numbers and profitability, diversity is great for the bottom line. Inclusion is great for the bottom line.” 

Joahanna urges businesses to “find that untapped market of your industry that you’re losing on if you don't make diversity as part of your business strategy”.

Indeed, it’s notable that the LinkedIn report predicted that “Gen Z will reward employers who value development and diversity”.

And at a time of cost-cutting, Joahanna makes a persuasive case for how inclusion is not some added extra, but “tangible”, citing factors like “brand awareness, attrition and recruitment savings, [and] legal fee savings. We’ve heard of companies paying millions of dollars because of harassment and pay inequality”.

It was great to catch up with Joahanna, and you can watch more video interviews with hiring legends over at our Scaling Stories page.

Things you might have missed

• Not every owner gets to inherit the Harlem Globetrotters in their pomp, and in the Harvard Business Review, Ron Carucci explores the topic of ‘Leading effectively when you inherit a mess’.
• In a world where we’re looking for maximum efficiency, noisy open plan offices are being shown the door. Meta has discovered the cubicle, reports Cal Newport following a Wall Street Journal article on how the social media giant is tackling bad office vibes.
• While we’re on the subject of spaces, a piece in the The Atlantic explores the sweet spot between WFH and office-land – ‘third places’.
• And finally, OpenAI have published a paper on whose jobs are actually under threat, but here’s Benedict Evans on why we don’t need to worry.

Recruiting fail

Here’s proof, if ever it was needed, that large language models are no match for human hiring.

Thanks for reading

It’s been a blast. Keep spreading the Intrro gospel and we’ll be back next time for more tech recruitment tales.