The recruitment industry is changing faster today than perhaps anytime in history. Simply posting online job ads and searching LinkedIn databases are not going to deliver the high-quality candidates employers need to remain competitive. Instead, employers need a future-proof recruitment model that enables them to achieve consistent results, despite the ever-changing marketplace.
This future-proof recruitment model requires out-of-the-box thinking from recruiters, cross-functional collaboration, and the ability to test recruitment marketing implementation in real-time. Only with this high-level recruitment model can employers hope to stay nimble enough to solve recruitment issues that deliver results, reduce hiring costs, improve ROI, and most importantly attract top talent candidates. But – how do you start building a future-proof recruitment process?
The Future-Proof Recruitment Mindset
The candidate landscape is set to change even more in the next 10 years than it has over the past 40 years. Recruiters must prepare for this transition now by redefining every element of the recruitment process. This transformation isn’t as easy as hiring a new member of the team, positioning them in the most wanted candidate pool, and hoping for successful hiring results. This change is bigger than just expanding your team or buying the next best recruitment solution, it’s about changing every component of the recruitment operating model. The future of recruitment requires each of these components to embrace five transformative characteristics that will establish new mindsets and structures in the recruitment process.
1. Humanizing
Candidates are no longer looking for just a job. Instead, today’s candidates want to see the purpose in their work and feel like they are contributing to the overall mission of the company. These candidates also are looking for jobs that are a good “fit” for them. They want jobs that connect with who they are and who they want to be. Thanks to the Internet, today’s candidates also have come to expect a more enduring, interactive candidate engagement process. To meet this demand, employers must create a process that is authentic, engaging, and one that creates an experience the candidates want to share. The standard” apply and wait,” and “we’ll contact you” doesn’t work anymore. A future-proof recruitment process must empower and engage prospective candidates. Employers must develop a candidate-centric approach that includes tangible outcomes, trust, and transparency.
2. Agile
The future of recruitment will not be a one-size-fits-all approach. Cookie-cutter recruitment strategies won’t attract top talent. Instead, a more methodical approach is necessary. The future-proof recruitment strategy must continuously test and analyze the recruitment process by obtaining candidate feedback and making adjustment as needed. This adaptive approach uses self-organizing teams and cross-functional partners, prioritizes progress over perfection, and adjusts at a vastly accelerated pace to fill vacancies with qualified candidates.
3. Technology-Driven
Technology and analytics are rapidly expanding and will transform each function, and ultimately each role in the recruitment process. This is prompting a technology-driven reinvention of the recruitment model, which will require a new demand for digital skills in recruitment. Existing recruitment roles will need to embrace this new technology to remain effective at sourcing and attracting talent. This means that recruitment teams not only will need to develop strong interpersonal skills, but they must also have excellent technological and analytical skills, as well as the capabilities to embrace new ways of working in the emerging digital age of recruitment.
4. Adaptive
With the rapid changes in technology and the candidate-driven market, future-proof recruitment teams must be more flexible and agile than ever before. Recruiters must have the skills and experience to use multiple recruitment techniques and tactics to create candidate generation and candidate engagement. This quick adaptability will help attract the most prospective candidates and will give recruitment teams more insight into how to guide them through the recruitment funnel.
5. Cross-Functional Ecosystem
Recruitment is a billion-dollar industry driven by thousands of tech-related products that digitally-enable companies to become candidate-centric and candidate engagement focused. The paradox is that companies now have more tools, information, and capabilities than ever before, but finding ways to connect the dots, adapt, and master this emerging tech and data-driven initiatives is not only confusing but also costly and time-consuming
The truth is that recruitment is becoming more specialized because we are no longer just selling a job or building an employer brand. Instead, employers must find ways to connect with their prospective candidates’ need on a much deeper level. Ultimately, no organizations will be able to do everything in-house because the cost of keeping up with the right technology, job market dynamics and the changes in candidate behavior will become too specialized and tech-data driven.
To ensure continued recruitment success, employers need to develop cross-functional ecosystems of small internal teams or suppliers with add-on services that combine data, analytics, and technology to deliver decision-making recruitment solutions. A cross-functional ecosystem will help employers build a future-proof recruitment model that is tightly focused on candidates. This new model can scale up recruitment knowledge, enhance recruitment processes, and build on characteristics that define the mindset, structure and economic viability of the company to improve ROI, reduce the time-to-hire, and minimize hiring costs.
Let me be honest, the recruitment team will not change overnight. It will not be a quick and easy process, but it must be done if you have any hopes of remaining competitive in the fierce job market. The future-proof recruitment team must be carefully crafted into a lean and agile recruitment marketing and data behavior approach to have success at hiring your ideal candidates.
In Part 3, we will go into more depth about how to build cross-functional collaboration.
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