What are the recruiting trends to look out for in 2020?

Well, the year has flown by and we’re almost at its end. So as things wind down for the festive season, it can be a good time to think about some of the more strategic things you can do next year to make your life a little easier.

To help, I’ve done a bit of a round up of the top trends people are predicting will make an impact in recruitment in 2020.

There are a few common themes - along with a lot of differing opinions. I’ve summarised them all below and tried to make sense of them for you.

Hopefully they reaffirm some of the decisions you’ve already made. Or give you a few ideas if you’re still not sure where to focus your efforts next year 😉

- Rob

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Ok, we’re going to get a bit meta here - and look at the trends in the top recruitment trends for 2020...

The 7 articles I reviewed had a total of 46 trends. Some were only mentioned in one article, while a few came up time and again.

I’ll go through them by starting with the most popular trends - and you can find links to all the articles at the end.

☝️ The top 4

The four trends that were mentioned the most were:

Candidate experience
Hiring for soft skills and adaptability
Employer brand
Automation

Candidate experience

With a shortage of skilled workers, it’s not too surprising that candidate experience kept coming up. It’s a proven way to stand out from your competitors and turn candidates into employees.

For example, people satisfied with how they were treated as a candidate are:

38% more likely to accept a job offer
More than twice as likely to recommend a company to others, even if they didn’t get the job

And even if they’re not sure about a company, 87% of candidates say a great recruitment experience can change their mind.

But the opposite is also true - 83% of people say a bad candidate experience can turn them off a company they initially liked.

In terms of how to provide a great experience in 2020, most agree it will take a combination of technology and personal touchpoints.

Hiring for soft skills and adaptability

As new jobs are invented and old ones disappear, a number of the articles predict it will become more important to hire people based on soft skills rather than experience.

In particular, adaptability and how quickly someone learns will be key traits employers should be focusing on.

Employer brand

According to LinkedIn research, companies with great employer brands receive 50% more qualified applicants and see a 50% reduction in cost-per-hire.

And with talented people having more options than ever, increasingly they’ll use the employer brand to decide which companies are worth their attention. Meaning your employer brand could be the difference between attracting great candidates - or losing them to a competitor.

Automation

It’s fair to say that anything that can be automated will be automated. And in recruitment, the hope is to automate tedious, time consuming tasks to free recruiters to spend more time on the things that matter - like the candidate experience and employer brand.

I found some of the articles use artificial intelligence (AI) and automation interchangeable. While AI is used in automation, there are many things that can be automated without AI.

For example, there are many different software options for scheduling meetings without sending emails back and forth to agree on a time. Most work well and don’t use AI.

So don’t assume AI is something you must have. Rather focus on what problem you’re trying to solve, or the outcome you want, and find the best solution for that.

✌️ The other big trends

The next two most mentioned trends were:

Data and analytics
Social media

Data and analytics

The theme in data and analytics was all about quality, not quantity. Instead of using data to say what happened in the past, it’s predicted companies will start using recruitment and HR data to influence strategy.

Also, data and analytics will be used to improve the hiring process. And to better attract candidates, predictive analytics will help to highlight the most effective hiring channels, communication formats and engagement methods.

Social media

Social media isn’t going anywhere. As long as there are large numbers of potential candidates on a platform, recruiters will post, advertise or reach out to them about jobs.

But with almost every company using social media to find and communicate with candidates, it’s crowded. To stand out you'll need to offer a different, more personal experience than everyone else.

☕🍰 Complementary trends

Among the many other trends predicted, quite a few are complementary to the top ones listed above.

Personalisation was one such area, as it helps provide a better candidate experience.

Tools like chatbots or a CRM were mentioned as tools companies will use to provide personal experiences to the people they’re trying to hire.

Also, good quality content is essential to an employer brand and social media strategies. Gone are the days of simply posting job alerts. Instead, the best companies will focus on what makes the company a great employer.

One way to do this will be through employee stories.

These can take many forms, such as a blog post, a video, or social post. The key will be authenticity and helping people better understand what it’s like to work at your company, and what’s in it for them.

AI was also mentioned a couple of times in relation to outreach and screening.

As we looked at in a past newsletter, I’m not convinced AI is good enough for these tasks. Natural Language Processing is improving, but it’s still not seamless enough to replace a human. And despite the assurances of vendors, it’s not clear how AI trained on past results can escape the inherent bias that exists in the workplace.

🛍️ And the rest

The rest of the trends were a bit of a mixed bag:

Warm talent pool - keeping people interested in your jobs, or past applicants, engaged until you have a new job available.
Flexible working - this covered flexibility for the candidate (working from home, different hours) and flexibility for the company (contract types).
Virtual reality - for use in assessment and showing what it would be like to work at the company (this seems a bit premature and video does the job for the latter).
Texting as a communication tool - as it can provide better response rates.
Increased use of employee referrals.
Diversity in hiring.
Non conventional assessments and screenings, such as gamification and using personality tests early in the hiring process.
A focus on Gen Z as more of them enter the workforce (the oldest members of Gen Z are 24/25).
Email marketing as a tool to reach candidates and build relationships (works well with the point above on the warm talent pool).

And that’s it! There’s quite a lot to unpack there.

But I know you’re all very busy, and 2020 won’t be any different. So as you’re unlikely to have the luxury of working through a list of 17-odd trends any time soon, the key themes that should give you the best bang for your buck (or hour of time) are:

Focus on what the candidate wants
Great content
Analytics

I chose these because everything starts with the candidate. By understanding what they want, you can provide a better, and more personal, hiring experience.

It’ll also inform what content you should be making to attract them. How to better explain what it’s like to work at your company. What makes your jobs great. And why they should apply.

Additionally, having great content will help build your employer brand. And using a combination of video and text over social, email and your career site will help spread your message far and wide.

And last, but not least, analytics will help you understand how you’re doing. It can show you what works, so you can do more of it. And what doesn’t, so you can avoid it and try something else.

The articles I reviewed for this newsletter were (in no particular order):

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That’s it for now. Let me know if you have any questions - you can get in touch here.

And if you’re ever looking for a past newsletter, you can find them all here.