8 Trends in Recruitment

Kelly Bailey, an expert in the field of recruitment, the head of a recruitment company, told CleverControl about changes in the modern recruiting process: how the communication with the specialists who had “too many” job offers changed, and how the competition for candidates has increased.

Global changes in the labor market started to happen a few years ago, when recruitment has ceased to rely primarily on job search websites, this is especially noticeable in the IT sector. Now job sites are merely an auxiliary source of search because LinkedIn and other professional social networks drive them out. Due to that fact, recruiters increasingly have to engage in active search - work with candidates who are not currently considering job offers. Thus, a recruiter is making more of an effort to interest a candidate and works with his or her motivation. Another direction of change is the proliferation of remote communication. In the past years, remote recruitment became increasingly popular, recruiters communicate and conduct interviews with candidates via Skype. Considering how fast life is, especially in a metropolis, saving time on the road makes more and more sense. So some stages of the job interview are transferred into the online. In any case, you have to understand that nothing can fully replace personal interaction in the final decision on the candidate's suitability because no media of communication on the Internet gives a full representation of a person.

Also recently automated search sources were implemented in the activities of recruiters. These programs allow you to gather information from social networks and other sites on the Internet, greatly facilitating the work.

Another trend of the IT industry lies in the fact that many professionals want to get a job abroad and relocate. In this regard, it turns out that we compete not only with our home recruiting agencies but also with international outsourcers and companies who are ready to provide relocation for the candidate. This leads to the fact that recruiters have to do more work on searching and viewing of candidates, thus, taking longer to make a decision, and deeper assessing the risks associated with motivation. And the candidates themselves have become more cautious and selective in choosing an employer. In this regard, if you speak the language of sports, recruiters-sprinters are now in the past and they are replaced with recruiters-stayers who are prepared for a longer work on each position and ready to race at long distances. In the labor market, including in the IT field, many recruiters working in-house in agencies and freelance hunt for candidates. This leads to the fact that professionals often fail to respond to the requests, the letters, they get sick of communicating with recruiters. In the profiles of some programmers on LinkedIn you can even find messages addressed to recruiters "do not offer me a job, please do not disturb". Of course, nowadays people are annoyed by spam, and the wrong approach of some recruiters is often perceived as spam.

What the recruitment sources can you confidently call things of the past?

In the case of professional recruitment, we can safely say that the ads in the Newspapers are long gone. In our technological society, especially in the IT field, the candidates will not respond to an ad in the newspaper as they are unlikely to read print media for job search. And advertising in the subway, in this case, is ineffective too. If the area is not tied to IT and a specialist is far from the Internet communications then the advertising in newspapers and the subway can still be quite effective. This is especially true of mass recruitment for entry level jobs. As for the job search sites, analytics shows that some sites are slowly dying, there is monopolization in this sector and probably soon there will be only one or two major job site and industry-specific portals, where there are sections on job search and candidates. These trends are easily spotted when we see how many companies are registered on a particular resource, more and more companies buy package deals on large job search sites and the spending on printed media is clearly cut back. The direct search for candidates is also a thing of the past: when a recruiter calls the company under cover and asks to be connected with potential candidates. Now most job seekers are on LinkedIn and its search is much faster and easier.

Which skills the recruiters should start mastering now, where are there more and more opportunities to find the right candidates?

In order to work more effectively, the recruiter must understand that we should not limit ourselves to any one source of search, hoping to find the suitable applicant on it. We have to go different ways to employ acquaintances, learn social networks, etc. One of the most effective methods of in-house recruiters is searching through their employees: when they recommend suitable candidates for a reward.

How do you recommend acting when, say, you need to find a top Manager in a non-trivial position?

When searching for candidates for a position of top Manager it is necessary, first, to determine its profile, that is, the basic search criteria: experience, knowledge, character, and competencies. The profile dictates the understanding of which areas you might find a suitable candidate. Further analysis creates a long list, which lists the company, the position, and then the specific people that we can be interested in. In the process, we can discover new places where potential candidates and the long list will be supplemented as it is not something frozen and unchangeable. Next, we need to go to specific people. As a rule, in such cases, we search job sites, our own database, LinkedIn, and search engines on the Internet, thus, revealing the people who work at desired positions in the right companies one by one. Then we sent letters or make calls to these people with offers of professional acquaintance. At this point, it is not necessary to immediately proceed with the job offer. You can start with such a robust tool, as the appeal to the candidate for advice. For example, we ask you to recommend colleagues and acquaintances who are engaged in a particular task. We explain in general terms that there is a company, which has an interesting job. Top managers are often people generous people, they are happy to help and give advice. Also, these people appreciate professional connections and new friends, knowing that in the future they may be useful to them. In the process of further dialogue, we agree on the call, tell the candidate more about jobs, tasks, company, and conditions so our interlocutor thinks that he or herself may be interested in it. If not, while chatting you can always get to know what this person would be interested in to continue his or her professional activities. Overall, the main thing is to achieve trust and to establish personal contact with the person to be able to engage and understand that what you can offer him or her now or in the future. In parallel with this “one by one” search, there is work with recommendations. We appeal to the people who might know the people we need. For example, they can work in related departments or communicate as clients or partners. We are also looking for suitable candidates to us in public comments in the media and in the lists of participants in specialized conferences. After we find their names all that is left is to find their Internet profiles and contacts to continue working using the previous scheme.

What recruitment sources can you name as “the future of recruitment” with confidence?

The labor market is evolving towards automation. Professionals who are engaged in mass hiring and work on the level of simple resume analysis (suitable/not suitable) can be successfully replaced by automated programs in the coming years. There is a high probability that in the next few years only highly qualified recruiters will remain in demand. And yet we must understand that, despite all the advantages of using new technologies, for greater efficiency, we should be able to combine automated programs and recruiters’ work.