Being “in the know” about recruiting trends can help keep you from being caught off guard when these impact your organization. As we round out the first quarter of 2016, what are some of the trends that are shaping recruiting in 2016? Let’s take a look.
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6 Recruiting Trends for 2016
- Companies, not candidates, are often the ones competing. As unemployment levels decrease, it becomes more and more important to “sell” the organization rather than simply to search for talent. The market is shifting—more control is in the candidate’s hands, especially for high-caliber individuals who may have multiple offers to weigh. As such, organizations need to actively communicate the benefits of the job and the company in order to compete for top talent. Job descriptions pull double-duty: they must both accurately describe the job and sell the benefits of applying for it.
- Employment branding is taking center stage. After reading the first recruiting trend, it’s probably no surprise that employers are now in a position where they need to focus more attention on how the organization is perceived in the marketplace. This will impact the quality of candidates who will apply for an open position, and thus it will have a direct impact on the quality of hire that the organization can make. As organizations compete for talent, the organizational employment brand becomes more and more critical. The employment brand can also affect productivity of the current talent pool; employees who are proud to work at your organization are more likely to be productive and satisfied and less likely to be looking for a new job.
- Candidates get more attention. Keeping the theme of the first two trends, another trend is that employers that want to attract top talent are facing a situation where they need to be more attentive to candidates if they hope to “win” the competition for attracting star employees. Gone are the days in which employers could all but ignore applicants and still expect to find candidates eager and in need of a job at the end of the process. In today’s market, the candidates have more options than in years past, meaning that if an employer waits too long or doesn’t provide regular status updates, there’s an increased likelihood that the candidate they’re considering may have already found and even accepted another role—and will have assumed that the employer was either uninterested or inept along the way. This means that employers need to focus on the entire recruitment process and improve it from the candidate perspective. Simpler applications, more follow-up, faster turnaround times, feedback after interviews, and even fast responses to candidates not selected—all are prime areas for employers to differentiate themselves and stand out to top talent.
- Focus on digital and social media continues to grow. While this trend has been growing for a while, 2016 certainly shows no signs of it slowing down. With the competition for talent increasing, recruiters are finding they must branch out in terms of where candidates are sought and how easy it is for them to apply. Increasingly, this means extending recruiting efforts to more and more online avenues, including social media. It also means making mobile sites user friendly and making online applications available and error-free. It means ensuring that company information is easy to find and presented consistently across various media types. Even after all that is in place, remember that the company image online must be consistent with the employment brand—all of which must strive to accurately reflect organizational culture.
Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at two more 2016 recruiting trends.