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How is recruiting today different from 5 years ago?
The recruiting process has changed so much over the course of my career, but the past few years seem to be really drastic. What, in your opinion, are the biggest changes and new challenges to recruiting to come along in the past 5 years?
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4 Answers
I think the biggest change for us has been the degree to which social media is utilized in our recruiting strategies. We are constantly recruiting independent contractors for mystery shopping, merchandising, and retail marketing programs throughout the United States. Today's recruiter has to 'think outside the box' when it comes to finding quality new talent. It's no longer enough to post to job boards and wait for the recruits to come to you. You have to be where they are. We utilize a variety of traditional job boards, niche groups, and social media to accomplish out goals. Sometimes, even that's not enough. That's when you pull out the phone book and start calling organizations that have been helpful in the past, such as your local chamber of commerce or a local college or church.
Some of the thoughts that are top of the mind now:
1. 'Power of choice' has shifted from the Employer to the Employee. Today, the potential employee needs to be informed, engaged, and woo-ed more than ever before.
2. Improvements in technology has made 'geography' history! No longer is the radar restricted to local candidates. The Turnaround Times (TAT) has significantly reduced thanks to the ubiquity of tools.
3. Globalisation has thrown up lot more opportunities for all the stakeholders. The time lag between 'innovators' and early adapters has reduced: the best practices are benchmarked and improved upon faster..!
4. All the above also provides a much superior mix -between full time employees, contractors, part time employeers, freelancers, interns..and so the efficiency is in judicious use of the media!
Besides the points on reaching out to applicants and the targeted profiles, for which social media, clearly is an unprecedented opportunity; there a few other challenges:
- the recruitment process, the employer brand and the working experience of the attracted talent have to be coherent and aligned to form a truly engaging experience. Recruiting is only the beginning, retaining is even more challenging
- global companies are targeting the same talent populations, therefore you're competing with many more entities to attract the same few. your job offer really needs to be appealing;
- the values of the company have to be in line with the applicants expactations. Younger generations coming into the work force attach a lot more importance to different things than previous generations, such as CSR, environmental concerns, flexibility, leadership opportunities, work life balance, recognition package instead of remuneration, truly forming experiences and cross disciplines projects and exposure rather than pre-defined 5 years carrer path plans, etc....
In short, when recruiting today you can't just expect to be promising a good carreer a fair treatment and a good remuneration to succeed, and you have to be able to deliver on the promise based on which you attracted your applicants.
The overwhelming changes to recruiting have been in channels and mediums employed to faciliate commuication between a company seeking to hire and a qualfied candidates seeking opportunities. From Social Media as an outreach tool to almost paperless recruitment lifecycles, much investment has been made in the vehicles of this essential communication. To a certain degree, with so many avenues of communication available. it is the message itself which has been neglected. To that end, now focus and investment is turning to address exactly that quality of communication to enhance candidate experience and to market a given company's employment value proposition (EVP).
Recruiting itself is becoming more organized and defined by companies as a process with points of measurement and performance indicators. Standards for performance are emerging and internal recruitment and outsourced recruitment (RPO) performance now has benchmarks and industry standards to measure performance and process improvements. This means better visibility into recruitment oosts and control of performance-based outcomes, aided by technologies that track and report on on drill-down activities, not just net end results.
Finally, over the past few years and continuing forward, we see a trend by companies to globalize their core operations including recruitment, and in doing so, are looking to their partners and providers to erase the traditional distinction between Contingent Labor and Direct Hire, and provide more holistic solutions that address Total Workforce Management, leveraging both technology and services to combine similiar front-end talent attraction activities and other similiar process in tandem to gain efficiencies and economies of scale.
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