Job seekers are expecting more out of the recruitment experience — are you answering the call?
Understanding what job seekers wanted from a new job used to be simple. For decades, the lure of a bigger salary was enough to attract top talent in any industry, but recently things have changed. Studies show that people are seeking out opportunities for career growth and flexibility above pay raises.
These revelations fly in the face of what most people assume a potential candidate wants from their next job. It also means that recruiters need to be aware of shifting trends if they’re going to stay competitive going into 2020.
4 Hiring Trends to Watch in 2020
Don’t worry, the hiring trends we’re talking about today aren’t ping pong tables in the break room and beer Fridays. These trends are actionable and can be directly tackled by your hiring team. They aim to help you create a better candidate experience while attracting top talent to your company.
1. COVID-19 Will Have Businesses Recruiting More Remote Workers
Recent studies show that remote work is increasing in popularity among employers and job seekers alike. Global trends show that remote work has increased 159% over the last 12 years. Not only that, but job seekers are seeing it more as a requirement than a perk. In fact, 68% say the ability to work remotely impacts their decision on whether or not to take a new job.
Given the recent shift in our working lives due to COVID19, it’s more important than ever to be prepared to recruit remote workers. Reports are already showing that this unprecedented crisis may have long lasting effects on the job market and a boom in remote work well after it has passed. While it might be ideal for your company to have people onsite, the recent crisis has shown us you must be prepared for a hybrid or even fully remote workforce at any moment.
If you’re planning on investing in remote employees or even just offering telecommuting options for your current staff, you’ll need to invest in the right technology. Most companies with a remote workforce opt to use video conferencing software to connect their distributed team.
Not only is video conferencing software ideal for keeping your current remote team members engaged, it also opens up your candidate pool. Interviewing out-of-state employees for remote positions is easier with video conferencing software and much more cost-effective than flying every candidate out to the office for an in-person meeting.
2. Recruitment Marketing Will Be Front-and-Center
Before the rise of social media, it was easy to stay in control of your brand story, but employer branding has evolved in the age of websites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn. Any potential applicant can Google your company before deciding if they want to work there. All of this makes employer branding more important than ever when it comes to recruiting new talent.
Using an omnichannel approach like recruitment marketing keeps your business top-of-mind when people are job seeking, as well as allows you to keep tabs on your online reputation. Recruitment marketing uses common marketing tactics to attract and nurture people to apply for jobs at your organization. A project management tool can make sure that all parties, such as HR and creative, are one the same page for all recruitment branded materials going out.
Recruitment marketing opens your talent pool up to passive candidates and other applicants you might not have access to otherwise. They may not be job hunting now, but when they do decide that it’s time to move on, your organization will be top-of-mind because of the relationship you’ve built. It’s a long play for attracting top level talent.
3. The Onboarding Experience Will Be Reimagined
What good is recruiting top talent if you can’t keep them around for more than a few weeks? The onboarding experience is crucial to retaining newly hired employees. In fact, 64% of new hires are likely to leave after a negative onboarding experience. Recruitment and onboarding can no longer function are two separate processes and instead must become one.
Streamlining and extending your employee onboarding process can help prevent turnover. Employee training shouldn’t end after a new hire’s first day. Build-in continued education and learning along with onboarding, and reimagine what it means to onboard an employee. All of this is crucial to ensuring your new employees are fully engaged during onboarding.
Employee onboarding software can help you iron out the little details, automate mundane daily tasks, and allow your HR and recruiting team to focus on creating a more personalized and comprehensive onboarding experience. Whether you need to employ a remote desktop software, organize team wide training, or more, it can help keep all members on track.
4. Employee Referrals Will Become More Important
People trust the opinions of people they know and respect. When you buy something online, you’ll likely check the user reviews before deciding to purchase. Why shouldn’t your hiring process be any different? Utilizing your current employees and their professional networks is one of the great untapped resources of recruiting. That’s why we’ll likely see an increase in employee referrals moving into 2020.
Statistics show that while only 7% of candidates are employee referred, 29% of new hires were referred by another employee. That means when your current employees do refer a candidate the chances of them being a good fit are pretty high. And why wouldn’t that be true? After all, who knows better about culture fit and your company values than the people working for you right now?
If you don’t already have an employee referral program in place then now is the time to start. Decide what incentives you’ll offer to employees for referrals, invest in the right software to track incoming applicants, and roll out an internal communications plan to share the news with your team.
Looking Forward
These four trends aren’t the only changes we’ll see in 2020. But they are some of the biggest shifts the industry is likely to deal with. Plan ahead for next year and you’ll be two steps ahead of the competition.
Lauren is a Senior Content Specialist at G2 with five years of content marketing experience. You can find her work featured on CNBC, Hubspot, Yahoo Finance, and on the G2 Learning Hub. In her free time, Lauren enjoys listening to podcasts, watching true crime shows, and spending time in the Chicago karaoke scene.
