This time of year, everyone wants to know what’s next. But I don’t need to break out my crystal ball because the indicators of what we can expect around the corner in recruitment and hiring during 2020 are quite clear.
And here’s the reason I’m bullish on these predictions: The signs are already around us for anyone ready to take a look. Take a train through any city, and watch the number of people working on their cell phones versus their laptops. Look at the huge growth in assistive devices and how they have become integrated into our tech and our homes. Think about the level of immediacy we expect of our food delivery or goods—we can’t wait for 2-day shipping; we need Amazon NOW.
Candidates expect more. Gone are the days of 7% unemployment and using the tediousness of your application process as a screening mechanism to see who really wants to work for your company. (I know it wasn’t you, but you’ve heard people say it, too, right?)
Speed and Personalization as a Competitive Advantage
We have become impatient in the most beautiful of ways. Information is at our fingertips, communication happens in real time, and most of the experience is customized for us. Run a search on Google, and it’s not just ads that are targeted—your search results are personalized to you by default based on your past search history.
The tremendous advances in the power of computing have driven speed and data in ways that are fundamentally changing our expectations of technology. Today, fast, easy, and personalized experiences aren’t a pleasant surprise—they are the expectation. The companies that can create consumer-like experiences within recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and the overall talent experience will hire better talent because the best talent will not just expect it—they’ll demand it.
Transparency and Communication
My friend and industry thought leader Gerry Crispin has long advocated for respect in the candidate experience. And it turns out that what candidates want isn’t unreasonable. After applying, the most frequent question candidates ask is, “What is the status of my application?” It’s a fair question considering that most applications take at least 20 minutes to complete (perhaps double that if you’re also requiring an assessment).
Candidates want to understand where they are in the hiring process and when they can expect next steps. After all, they can click a link in an e-mail and track a package in real time, and they are certainly more invested in joining your company than they are in the average UPS package.
That level of communication and accessibility to status is increasingly important for keeping candidates engaged throughout the hiring process. Candidates won’t wait in the black hole of your applicant tracking system (ATS); they will move on with a competitor that provides better engagement than you do.
Automation to Drive Productivity
I don’t know anyone who started a career in recruiting because of a passion for interview scheduling. There is not an HR person I’ve met who loves sending e-mails with the link for where and how to access 401(k) enrollment information.
More likely, you began your career in HR because, like me, you believe in the collective power of talented people working together to accomplish amazing things. Or, maybe someone suggested this career path because you’re a “people person” or a natural relationship-builder. Yet, increasingly, HR and recruiting teams are spending more time at computers instead of with the very people who brought us to the People Team in the first place.
I like to talk about spending less time with the BS (that’s “boring stuff”) and more time with people. That’s one of the major benefits that technology can offer us today. Technology throughout history has freed humans to do higher-value work. That’s been true of every revolution, whether on the farms, in the factories, or in offices.
We’re not making calculations by paper or even calculators in most cases anymore; we’re using Microsoft® Excel or Google Sheets, with real-time collaboration. The opportunity to drive efficiencies, through automation of high-volume or rote tasks, frees our time to focus on the meaningful work that brought us into HR in the first place: connecting with the people.
So, what’s the future of recruiting? It’s a future driven by empowerment through technology, enabling us to do more than what we can alone.
Have a problem? Let’s face it: Today, there’s “an app for that.” The technology and experience in our consumer lives are driving expectations in our corporate lives, and when they don’t meet our expectations, we write them off as broken because that’s how it feels.
So my prediction for hiring in 2020 is an easy one: We’re catching up with the expectations of our talent.
 Aaron Matos, Founder and CEO of Paradox, is an HR practitioner turned HR technology entrepreneur. With a passion for recruiting, Matos has started several successful companies in the recruiting space that have served tens of thousands of clients and millions of jobseekers. He is the founder/former CEO of Jobing.com and Recruiting.com. Today, Matos serves as the full-time CEO of Paradox, an artificial intelligence company that believes recruiting is a people game. Connect with Aaron on LinkedIn. |