Recruitment is never less than a lever on the business front.Quoting the great soul-:
Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
Archimedes
Characterizing manpower as key to business growth, the growing job opportunities and a reservoir of available talent pool, hiring would not be only about sourcing, interviewing candidates, and getting the vacancy filled. Instead, it would be increasingly about matchmaking the requirements of a job role to a candidate’s capability and vice versa. Organizations would be increasingly looking for a quality talent pool for their open positions and right kind of matchmaking would definitely hold the answers to business growth and expansion.
Outsourcing to pick up pace: It has already been observed in recent times that business leaders including many CEOs are driving the talent agenda. The recruitment industry and especially the recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) specialists is increasingly making use of social media and analytics to deliver both efficiency and experience. These two important factors would be the new favorites, while looking for quality talent and strategizing to retain the talent. In the present socio-economic scenario, this model would be easily adapted beyond the mass hiring sectors to the niche hiring ones like core, pharma, and public services, etc. The RPO systems working on a strong technology platform has the capability to perform job-candidate matchmaking, deliver world class experience to all parties involved while simultaneously managing cost and time efficiencies.
Social media will gain importance as a sourcing channel: With 243.2 million internet users and 106 million active social media users among a total population of over 1200 million, the social media wave is yet to get into the heart of India.Talking of using social media for recruitment, this penetration has been equally low, especially when compared to the global markets (where more that 90% recruiters consider using social media as one of their major tools). However, given its numerous benefits and ease of usage, there would definitely be increased bent towards using social media channels in 2015. While the penetration might not reach to 90% in this year itself,according to ISR 2015, the number of recruiters accepting social media as recruitment and sourcing channel will certainly double.
Technology adaptability to increase: As increasing number of employers reach out to tier two and tier three cities to meet their hiring needs,increased usage of technology would not be a choice but a necessity. This would increase the adaptation of innovative tools like video interviewing, asynchronous interviewing, online assessments, that not only will increase the efficiency of the hiring process by 50-60%, but at the same time help in increasing the quality of hire.
Analytics: The business now expects the human resources leaders to be strategic partners. As the growth wave in business fires up the hiring engine of the organization, the talent acquisition leaders are expected to have the armor of data. By using analytics,the HR professionals would be ready to move from intuition-based decision making to data-driven decision making. A recent study by LinkedIn on global recruitment market shows that most organizations do not use data well in the space of talent acquisition. Though, India with 55% score, is well above the global average of 24% on “how well analytics is used for talent acquisition process, this number would grow further as analytics enters more into workforce planning, workforce utilization, and simultaneously into untouched areas like sourcing.
Candidate experience comes to gain the center stage: With everyone fighting the war to attract the best talent, it is only obvious that organizations are now focusing on delivering a unparalleled experience to the candidates. Though a year ago, this intent was limited to industries like IT/ITES, it will soon be adapted by others too. A good candidate experience is brilliant marketing for an organization and a bad hiring experience may cause the right applicant to turn down the job. Top talent has no desire to work in a disrespectful organization with leaders who simply don’t care about the recruiting process.
Online Assessment to change the game: When you are operating in a country like India, which is on the verge of reaping the demographic dividend, frontline hiring becomes an integral part of the hiring mix. Conducting interviews is a mammoth task and does not deliver desired results. Online assessments are proving to be the best solution in such situation. Claiming to bring efficiencies in the range of 40-60%, assessments are the new favorites amongst the industries like insurance, IT, BPO/ITES where frontline hiring forms a major pie of hiring mix. Many companies are working in a direction where interviews would be replaced by much more reliable online assessments.
Employers to woo passive Job seekers: Passive job seekers have been attracting the recruiters attention for quite some time now. And as increasing focus of organisations falls on “quality of talent” rather than time to fill or hiring manager’s satisfaction, this trend would grow further. There will be an upsurge in usage of tools like social media that encourage collaboration and help in engaging this set of job seekers. One can expect increasing number of organisations to have specific strategies for both active and passive job seekers.
Employer Branding: In today’s world of “Talent war”, attracting candidate is considered as important as attracting the customers. In such a scenario, recruiting will transform into more like a marketing function. Employer branding would gain more important than ever. Year 2015 will see employers across industries to focus on building attractive employer brands, and using channels like social media and video marketing to reach the workforce apart from the traditional methods.
Recruitment on mobile phones: India is home to about 350 million unique mobile phone users that use this medium to surf the internet. When talent spends such a large portion of their daily time on mobile, it makes sense for the recruiters to be there to attract their attention. As per a recent LinkedIn report, there has been a 90% increase in the number of users who use mobile to look out for job opportunities and 75% increase in the users who apply for jobs through this medium. This would encourage a large number of employers to have mobile optimized career sites and job postings.
