Corporate Recruiting is Changing

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butterfly transformationThe rise of social media, globalization, and the never ending technological revolution are three highly disruptive forces that are reshaping the world, society and business even as we speak. While we fascinate ourselves with the latest technological release to hit the market, you can be sure the next big transformation is being quietly incubated in Silicon Valley, just awaiting to explode onto the scene and change the game forever.

Corporate recruiting, like every entity on this planet, is being swept up and carried along in these times of change. The recruiter of 20 years ago (maybe even 10 years), is barely recognizable from that of today, transforming from more of a process driven internal resourcer to a brand conscious, technology enabled, social media inspired, globally engaged marketing professional whose product is their employer’s business, values and culture. In this article, we look at the three main ways that corporate recruiting is changing and the forces that are driving this change.

The Disruptive Arrival of Social Recruitment

Although social-media recruitment is certainly making a lot of noise at the moment, the CareerXroads Annual Source of Hire Study 2011 showed that the traditional jobs board is still six times a more influential recruiting channel than social-media, being the source of 20% of hires, compared to just 3.5% for social-media.

But for how long? Not long at all, according to a February 2012 Forbes article titled LinkedIn is Disrupting the Corporate Recruiting Market, which documented the sharp rise in revenues from LinkedIn’s recruiting service, which grew by 136% to $84.9 Million, which means it is officially the fastest growing ‘public provider of corporate recruiting solutions’. But, the crucial statistic is how it compares with Monster, the global talisman of Web 1.0 recruitment, as, during the same period Monster’s revenues of $250 million represented  2% growth. Forbes predicted that at this rate LinkedIn’s revenue could reach the size of Monster within the year, bringing Web 2.0 recruitment to the main stage.

We can expect then that over the course of the year, the corporate recruiter can be expected to increase their spend on social media and become more dependent than ever on social media as a source of talent. This could be the year that recruitment finally goes almost entirely ‘social’, which will begin to redefine the corporate recruiting environment, and, who knows, maybe ‘Social Corporate Recruiting’ roles will become the mainstream?

Employment Branding is Becoming the New Corporate Imperative

A recent article in HRM by Lea Soupatae, SVP HR for UPS highlights a building consensus amongst C- Level executives, from corporations such as IBM and the Home Depot, that employer branding is the new corporate imperative. While employer branding, or becoming an employer of choice has always been desired,  in such a tight labor market with such well documented talent shortages, the ability to attract and retain top talent is becoming a key differentiating factor for business. Since acquiring the status of employer of choice is central to attracting and retaining staff, employer branding, the process of developing your employer of choice status, has become a crucial component of the corporate recruiting paradigm.

Now more than ever Corporate Recruiters must be brand agents and ambassadors who are able to tune into the expectations of the external candidate market and effectively work with marketing and HR to develop an employer brand and image that will both attract and retain staff. Since recruiters are out on the front-line and they are the ones whose hiring efforts may be hampered by a poor employer branding strategy, corporate recruiters are having to change and must begin to lead the way in building and sustaining employer branding initiatives. It is a long term, more strategic approach to recruitment which the most progressive corporate recruiters are beginning to embrace.

Corporate Recruiters Are Becoming Early Adopters of New Technology

There is a certifiable conveyor belt of new technologies coming out of Silicon Valley and other places that can make the corporate recruiting process more efficient and effective. Such technologies include cloud based working, automated work-flow technologies, social-media, and mobile recruiting technologies, which if adopted early and used effectively can put your corporate recruiting team ahead of the competition.

Corporate recruiters can no longer afford to be laggards, or even saunter along with the ‘early or late majority’ when it comes to using new innovations, they must be ‘Early Adopters’. To do this, corporate recruiters must become more technologically aware and must be regularly asking themselves, is this the best way to perform this recruitment task, be that attraction or assessment? Or is there a a new technology available that can enable me to do this task more effectively and with improved results?

With the onset of all these changes to the corporate recruitment landscape, the profession is redefining itself, stepping out of the administrative back office and announcing itself on the modern stage as a key corporate function with a leading part to play in winning the talent war.

By Kazim Ladimeji