Once upon a time, recruitment was an arduous and slow process. Most people reading this probably don’t even remember the days of posting a job advertisement in a local newspaper and waiting for applications to come in via mail. Forget about remembering those days – I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the people reading this weren’t even around in those days!
Technology has obviously changed how we recruit. Traditionally, recruiters have been at the center of all talent acquisition, essentially serving as the hub between the candidate and the hiring manager. This hasn’t changed, but new tools and technologies are entering the talent acquisition space all the time. Applicant tracking systems are used fairly ubiquitously now, to better manage the candidate journey. As candidate experience grows in priority, candidate relationship management tools have emerged. Job boards and job board aggregators have been essential recruitment tools for years. Somewhat more recently, recruiters have begun to leverage social networks and social search. Recognizing that some of our best hires come from referrals, employee referral platforms are gaining in popularity. Psychometrics, a long-standing staple in the recruiter toolkit, have become more technologically advanced and can instantly deliver impressive, actionable analytics. The recruiter is still at the hub of all of this, but now the recruiter is surrounded by stacks of technology.
Here are 3 TA tech trends to look out for in 2018:
Recruitment Marketing will become a major area of focus. Aman Brar at Recruiting Daily predicts a shift towards a recruitment approach that more closely mirrors how marketing departments attract new prospects and clients. Recruitment marketing moves beyond tracking the prospective employees, and encourages more engagement by managing a company’s impressions and interactions with future and prospective hires, automating communication processes and driving engagement. Done properly, this contributes to a better candidate experience, which translates into more offers made and accepted.
Employer Branding is going to remain a priority for HR. Talent acquisition departments will embrace technology that monitors the reputation of organizations and their value proposition to employees. In this article from BetterTeam, it’s reported that “positive employer brands get twice as many applications.” The same article notes that companies with poor employer brands may end up paying 10% more per hire than companies with a positive employer brand. Employer brand is big, and it’s getting bigger by the year. You’ll notice that discussions about candidate experience technologies also focus on the impact to employer brand.
Conversion Rates in Sourcing will be a hot topic for many companies. SocialTalent’s latest Global Recruiting Survey found that on average, recruiters sourced 225 candidates for a single hire – a conversion rate of 0.4%. Top performing recruiters, however, were 150% more efficient. A top trend in 2018 will be focusing on quality over quantity. Pipeline speed and offer acceptance will become the key KPI’s on which recruiters are evaluated, and technology to support that efficiency will be added to recruiters’ tech stack.
This is just a brief snapshot of what to expect. By all forecasts, 2018 is going to see a huge boom in HR tech startups that promise to make the TA landscape much more data driven and objective.
Have you been considering new technologies in 2018? Let us know in the comments!