In order to keep up with today’s rapidly changing job market, recruiters will need to stay abreast of the latest recruitment and technological trends.
As technology continues to make our world smaller, organisations will find the workforce becoming increasingly global, changing the way we find, select and hire the best talent. From the growing focus on soft skills to the rise of artificial intelligence automating much of the recruitment process, the future of the recruitment industry is full of many exciting opportunities and challenges.
By having a better understanding of future trends, organisations can better prepare for what lies ahead. But just what are these trends and how will they affect the future of recruiting?
Building soft skills centric organisations
As technology continues to improve and the job market becomes more competitive, organisations are placing an increasing emphasis on hiring workers with the right soft skills.
This new focus on soft skills could lead to a shift away from more traditional forms of education and put the focus on better training, onboarding and development.
Furthermore, the rise of AI in recruitment will see many current day skills become obsolete, meaning workers will need to put more focus on learning more transferable soft skills in order to stay competitive in the jobs market and remain employable.
Artificial Intelligence
While there is a lot of talk about AI in recruitment making working life more efficient it can have some downsides too.
For example it can potentially introduce bias into the recruitment process if the data that is used to train the AI system is itself biased (or input/coded by a biased engineer, administrator etc).
Just ask retail giant Amazon, who were forced to discontinue a recruitment tool used for sifting high volumes of CVs because it disproportionately favoured male applicants. Put simply, the algorithm scanned resumes of past successful applicants (who were mostly men – because it was an engineering role) and then made recommendations for ‘good’ candidates based on CVs submitted to the company over the last 10 years.
Therefore, recruiters looking to utilise AI in their recruiting will need to show extra diligence when purchasing any form of AI based software to ensure that it actually does what it says on the tin.
Virtual recruitment & Video interviews
One of the key trends in recruitment that has stayed with us since the pandemic is the increasing use of virtual tools to digitise the recruitment process, such as video interview software, to connect with potential candidates.
While there will always be room for face-to-face meetings when hiring (it is still absolutely essential in many cases!). The introduction of these tools has no doubt helped to save a lot of time for both recruiters and candidates alike.
Unlike in the past when candidates would have to physically go to a location to be interviewed, most can now do this from home, which means if you are a job seeker, you can have multiple interviews in a day, hopefully increasing the likelihood of you getting employed.
Metaverse / VR
In the context of recruitment, the metaverse (which is a shared virtual space where people interact via their digital avatars) could potentially be used in future for a range of purposes, such as virtual job fairs or virtual interviews, where candidates and employers can meet and interact in an entirely virtual environment.
As the technology is still relatively new, it’s difficult to say for certain how the metaverse will be used in the future and what impact it will have on the recruitment industry.
In the even more distant future it is possible that many of us will actually be working in the metaverse full time! Think of something akin to the film Ready Player One, hopefully without the dystopian caravan living, although on a personal level I’m not thrilled with the idea of having one of those devices strapped to my face for 8 hours a day – yuck!
Blockchain
The Blockchain (or Blockchain technology to be more specific) is a form of decentralised digital ledger that removes the need for 3rd party verification. In the context of recruitment, blockchain tech could potentially be used as a more secure way of storing candidate information and then easily verifying that data.
For example, a candidate’s entire education and career history can be recorded on a blockchain, this would then be verified by past employers across the network, meaning that recruiters searching for candidates are getting the most accurate information, which can’t be gamed or fraudulently edited. This should help increase transparency in the recruitment industry and reduce the chance of making bad hiring decisions based on candidates being economical with the truth.
Overall this would help to improve the overall quality of the hiring process, while also increasing transparency and trust, since all the data would be stored in a secure and immutable manner. It would also give candidates the power to control their data far more efficiently than is currently possible – think about how often you have been contacted about a job based on an old CV that’s still floating around online. For example in this scenario it would even be possible for candidates to earn digital currency every time their data is used by a recruiter!
Diversity & Inclusion
The increased emphasis on diversity in the workplace is likely to continue. In order to achieve a more diverse workforce recruiters will have to focus on a number of strategies, such as better targeting their recruitment efforts to attract a more diverse set of candidates, better and fairer assessment processes and diversity training for recruiters and managers.
