by Dr. John Sullivan
Six major corporate recruiting trends that have been prominent during the last year will continue to be significant corporate recruiting trends during the next year.
- The mobile platform continues to be a critical tool – even though last year was “the year of the mobile platform,” the impact of this platform in recruiting will continue to expand and grow. The emergence of the technical capability that allows the direct “instant” application for jobs from mobile phones will soon become mainstream. A multitude of startups will continue their development of a variety of recruiting-focused mobile phone apps.
- A data-driven approach to operations continues to be the benchmark standard – even though most business functions have long ago shifted to data-driven decision making, the practice is strikingly unusual within recruiting. Google continues to separate itself from every other firm in its comprehensive data-driven approach to recruiting and its use of predictive metrics. Its recent data-driven research on the ineffectiveness of many traditional recruiting tools can only be classified as groundbreaking.
- Live video interviewing steadily grows in acceptance – live video interviews has now proven its effectiveness, so its use will continue to expand until it becomes the standard practice, at least for initial interviews.
- On-line candidate assessment continues toward the mainstream – as online technical knowledge and skill assessment options become cheaper and more effective, they will continue their growth until they become mainstream. Their impact is high because they reduce unnecessary interviews and they can dramatically improve the quality of hire.
- Remote work continues to expand the talent pool – the growth of technology and the willingness of managers to accept remote work positions will continue to dramatically expand the number of available recruits for those remote work jobs. This shift to remote work will also force recruiting to increase its capability to find and land candidates around the globe.
- Accelerated internal movement is still needed – continued uneven growth in business units will mean that there will be a much greater need for the rapid movement of current employees into new areas where they can have a higher impact. The most effective solutions have involved either using corporate recruiters to proactively move underused employees or encouraging employee referrals to quickly identify a wider range of talent for internal openings.
Section 2 of “The Top 25 Recruiting Trends, Problems, and Opportunities for 2014.” Originally posted on ere.net.