Diversity, Fresh Interview Techniques, Data, and AI Rank Among Latest Recruiting Trends
The world of recruiting has advanced way beyond handshakes, phone calls, and haggling over salaries. Today’s candidates want an end-to-end experience that carries into the onboarding process and beyond. As recruiters find themselves spending more time with each candidate, new technologies are springing up to handle the more mundane parts of the process.
Meanwhile, employers demand recruiters attract diverse candidate pools and use the latest strategies and technologies to streamline the process and secure hires.
If you’re a recruiter spinning in circles trying to figure out where your focus should be, read on. The “Global Recruiting Trends 2018” report from LinkedIn identifies four areas that are hot right now in corporate recruiting.
1. Diversity
Diversity initiatives aren’t new, but the reality at many companies fails to live up to the messages those companies project. While workplace equality has become a priority at many businesses, leaders still struggle to attract diverse candidates or implement meaningful changes in their organizations. Thirty-eight percent of respondents to the LinkedIn survey said they can’t find diverse candidates to interview, while 27 percent said they struggle to retain diverse hires.
Still, 78 percent of respondents said they want to increase diversity to improve culture, 62 percent said a diverse workforce would improve company performance, and 49 percent said it is important to have a diverse employee base that represents a diverse customer base. These numbers suggest that diversity hiring initiatives will only improve moving forward, as hiring managers and recruiters break out of traditional molds and make their companies more attractive options for diverse applicants.
“Having an employee base that reflects your users and customers is one of the top ways to ensure your products and services are reflective of the people using them,” says Brendan Browne, vice president of global talent acquisition for LinkedIn. “Often, companies are designing and building products for users which they truly do not understand. Having diverse employees — and more importantly, diverse opinions — can directly impact the company culture and financial performance.”
2. Interviews
While the standard sit-down interview will likely never go away, it is being augmented with new techniques that allow recruiters and hiring managers to get a better picture of the candidate. Some people are great at interviews, but turn out to be terrible workers. Conversely, other applicants may be nervous in the interview but may have been phenomenal employees. It is up to interviewers to find ways to get a more well-rounded picture of every candidate.
Sixty-three percent of respondents to the LinkedIn survey said traditional interviews fail at assessing candidates, and 57 percent said interviews don’t reveal candidate weaknesses. Forty-two percent also said the process is too subject to interviewer bias.
“It’s worth noting that traditional interview formats — like structured or behavioral interviews — are still popular among talent professionals and considered highly effective,” says Browne. “However, to truly understand a candidate’s soft skills, there are more innovative tactics we’re seeing pop up in the industry.”
For example, Browne notes that LinkedIn often uses soft skills assessment tools, job auditions, and walkarounds — “where we take candidates on a casual walk around the building” — as some ways to look at “the person behind the profile.”
“Technical tactics such as virtual reality assessments and video interviews are also gaining traction in the industry,” Browne adds. These tools “provide a more realistic view of a candidate’s personality … as well as give candidates a chance to try out a job before committing.”
3. Data
Every industry gathers data, and the recruiting sector is no exception. Recruiters and hiring managers are using employment data in innovative ways to determine what skills and proficiencies they need to prioritize in candidates.
Fifty-six percent of respondents said they’re using data to increase retention, and 50 percent use data to evaluate skills gaps. Fifty percent also said they’re using data to build better offers for candidates, and 46 percent use it to understand what applicants want.
“We are in the era of talent intelligence, and using data to inform your workforce strategy is inevitable for effective long-term recruiting,” Browne says. “If you’re Amazon and want to figure out where the best talent is to open a new office, or you’re looking at where you can find more engineers willing to relocate for the next product build, data and analytics are key.”
4. AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) keeps getting more intelligent, and it is driving success and eliminating inefficiencies for many recruiters, hiring managers, and human resource professionals. The recruiting sector can’t seem to go a month without some disruptive new AI-based technology that automates a mundane task, freeing up recruiters to spend more time interacting with candidates — but even those interactions are being automated to some extent.
Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they use AI to source candidates, 56 percent said they use it to screen candidates, and 55 percent said they use it to nurture candidates, according to the LinkedIn data. Furthermore, 42 percent use AI to schedule candidate interactions, and 24 percent even rely on AI to engage applicants.