Talent Acquisition Trends For 2018

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5 Talent Acquisition Trends For 2018: What Business Leaders Should Know

January 23, 2018

There’s no better time than now to reflect on how your talent acquisition approach has evolved in the last year – and discover what changes are on the horizon. While 2017’s recruitment buzz, like artificial intelligence, big data and the gig economy, are still relevant this year, there’s a slew of other talent acquisition trends you should be aware of as we make our way through 2018.

These five talent acquisition trends should be on your watch list this year:

Agility Over Experience

The business landscape is ever-evolving, which means the world of work (for employees) moves just as fast. While we expect candidates to meet the minimum skill requirements for our posted job roles, we should be looking at their flexibility as an employee as well. To stay innovative, companies must have workers who are comfortable keeping in touch with what’s cutting-edge in their space and learning whatever it takes to get the job done. To attract the right people, include agility as part of your soft skill requirements and be sure to ask candidates during the interview process for examples of how they’ve displayed this attribute in previous roles.

People Intelligence

Making more informed decisions based on data is what leads to increased efficiency and greater effectiveness. For example, instead of simply improving your candidate experience, conducting research to determine which specific candidate interactions need attention will lead to better results, faster. Same goes for analyzing sourcing conversion rates in order to increase efficiency and improve quality for high-volume recruitment. Don’t just go on your gut; leveraging science will help you make better talent acquisition decisions this year.

Belonging

Diversity and inclusion has been a hot topic for several years, but seeing this become reality for employees is known as “belonging.” This newly minted term doesn’t mean anything different; it just goes a step further. The idea is that only when employees feel completely comfortable being themselves is when true employee engagement occurs. When individuals are part of a team and company that values their opinions and who they are, they will share and contribute more. To promote a feeling of belonging, LinkedIn’s blog “How LinkedIn’s HR Chief is Changing the Diversity Conversation with ‘Belonging,’” suggests paying more attention to feelings, asking employees to tell personal stories, hosting town halls on sensitive topics and offering bias training to employees.

Holistic Software

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) and candidate relationship management (CRM) systems are no longer enough. In place of an ATS, companies are looking to more robust talent acquisition systems (TAS) that enable recruitment marketing and onboarding functions as well as provide feedback to candidates in real-time. And while CRMs enable companies to maintain relationships with candidates to feed a proactive sourcing cycle, a talent relationship management (TRM) system includes active and passive candidates, contingent workers and current employees. This inclusive approach builds more robust talent networks by enabling outreach to all segments of your talent community, in hopes of encouraging more ambassadors and referrals.

Virtual Reality

The bottom line is that leveraging virtual reality (VR) saves time for recruiters and candidates as well as provides a more authentic picture of the company for candidates and a true experience for employees. To enhance the employment brand, candidates can take virtual tours of company offices and participate in a “day in the life” exercise. VR can be used for onboarding and ongoing training as well. As VR capabilities grow and people adopt the technology in everyday life, so will its use cases in the talent space and candidates’ comfort level in interacting with the technology.

Only time will tell what 2018 will bring in terms of talent acquisition trends, but rest assured, these five will come to fruition. The business landscape and technology capabilities evolve so quickly that we’ll be talking about approaches, methodologies, tools and technologies at the end of this year that are not yet on our radar as well. But this should start you thinking about how you can incorporate new ideas into your talent acquisition strategy to freshen it up this year.

 

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Comments (1)

  1. All points are really great about talent acquisition trends.
    It saves time for recruiters and candidates as well as provides a more authentic picture of the company for candidates and a true experience for employees.

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