5 Recruiting Trends to Follow in 2018

Hiring talent has become quite difficult in today's candidate driven market. With the global unemployment rates being at the lowest in several years, it is time for recruiters to dump their old recruiting ideas and come up with some innovative methods to lure talented candidates to join their organization. It is therefore no surprise to find that technology usage by recruiters has increased in the current year fuelled with data analytics and adopting of innovative interview methods being the top trends that are playing a vital role in the recruitment field.

Let us now look at some of the top recruiting trends to follow in the current year:

1. Total focus on hiring a diversified workforce

Innovative organizations understand the critical aspect of hiring diverse people in their workforce. Today, diversity is directly correlated with the organizational culture and financial performance. According to a research conducted by LinkedIn, 78% of organizations prioritize diversity to enhance the culture and 62% do so to boost financial performance. It has been observed that by including diversified workforce organizations can reap the benefits of being more productive, more innovative and more engaged.

Walgreens, Lever and Pandora have already made meaningful efforts towards hiring a diversified workforce and have achieved great results. We expect this trend to only grow from here and there would be no surprise if we see more and more organizations following the examples set by these organizations in the near future.

2. Rise in technology investments

In order to manage, a higher volume of candidates, improve operational efficiency and maximize revenue margins, more and more organizations will require tools that save their time and ensure precise data on candidates. This has resulted in many global organizations to take the assistance of applicant tracking system to track candidate activity and employ CRM system for business development. In the future, organizations will also realize the importance of having an integrated job board and email templates in the recruitment software resulting in rise in technology investments in the current year as well in the year 2019.

3. Using innovative interview methods to access candidates in a better way

Although traditional interviews are going to stay here they have proved to be ineffective when it comes to reading candidates completely. To combat subconscious bias and reduce the undercut of important information more and more organizations will be using innovative interview methods to assess the candidate. This includes the use of online soft skill assessment, conducting job auditions, casual interviews taking place in a relaxed environment like a restaurant, using virtual reality to test the candidates in a simulated 3D environment and conducting video interviews to save the time of the candidate.

4. The growing role of analytics

It is normal for recruiters to churn out numbers to track the candidates. But, in the current year with the amount of data available and the speed at which it can be analyzed it can be used to predict hiring outcomes. With the help of artificial intelligence and analytics, it is possible to make smart recruiting decisions. In the near future, we expect organizations to develop talent intelligence strategy on the basis of analytics and artificial intelligence for informed hiring decisions.

5. Increased use of social and mobile recruiting

Today, every other person has a mobile device and access to social media. During the current year, more and more organizations are using social and mobile recruiting as a part of sourcing great talent. But, few of them have still not adopted these recruiting strategies for hiring. In the current year and next, expect organizations to invest heavily in social and mobile recruiting efforts.

Are you ready to turbo charge your recruiting efforts by staying on top of these recruiting trends in the current year?

Vivek Asrani is a content specialist at Talentnow RecruitX, a world class Applicant Tracking System built for staffing agencies. Vivek writes about the various aspects of recruitment technology.

7 Traits To Look Out for In Prospective Recruiters for Your Staffing Agency

Any staffing agency business is dependent, to a large extent, on the individual recruiters who are part of the team. In most cases the sum total of the performance of recruiters is the performance of the company. That’s why when you are hiring recruiters for your staffing company you have to extra careful to hire the right professional who display the optimum mix of professionalism, domain expertise and experience.

In this blog we take a look at some of the traits that will help you identify star recruiters-in-the-making for your staffing agency.

1. Great listening skills

This is one of the most important traits to look for in a recruiter. If the recruiters are able to listen properly to the candidates and clients, it would help them to find the best candidate for your clients for a given role. While interviewing the person, watch out for the listening skills. If they are good at listening and are able to take quick decisions based on it, it will help them consistently place the right candidate to your clients.

2. Excellent communication skills

This is really a no brainer. Since your recruiters will have to communicate with candidates and clients on a daily basis through multiple channels, they have to be excellent at both written and verbal communication. They should keep the candidates well-informed throughout the hiring process and maintain healthy relationships with the clients, which will help to grow your staffing business.

3. Good at handling pressure

Recruitment has become very competitive now with the scenario being candidate-driven and the emergence of gig economy. It becomes very important to select a recruiter, who can work under pressure situations; achieving the target earnings set by your agency. Select an individual who can remain cool under constant pressure to meet the demands of working in a booming industry.

4. Confident

Confidence is one of the key traits to watch out for in the recruiter for your staffing agency. They should have the confidence to meet the requirements of the client and balance it with the needs of the candidate. This particular feat requires lots of confidence in their own abilities. They should be able to judge the confidence level of the candidates. They should be able to evaluate the candidates on the basis of their confidence in themselves and their skill sets. This will make the recruiter select the best candidates with the highest chance of getting selected by the client.

5. Well versed with diversified marketing tactics

Recruiting candidates is not an easy job. It requires a recruiter to use various online marketing tactics to promote their jobs and maximize candidate submissions. Since, the majority of today’s workforce consists of Millennials, who are good at social media usage through mobile devices, it is mandatory for the recruiter selected to be mobile and social media savvy. They should also be well versed with Email marketing and other direct outreach methods.

6. Well-familiarized with the modern staffing agency software

Today, recruiters have to handle multiple tasks in a single day on top of the regular job of connecting with the clients and candidates. They are required to write job descriptions, update multiple client relationship profiles and screen hundreds of resumes. This makes it very important for you to select a recruiter, who is a multitasker, and well-familiarized with a modern recruitment software. A good software can automate and streamline day to day tasks, thus speeding up the hiring process for your recruiters. But this is possible only when all your recruiters are comfortable using a software for their day to day tasks.

7. Possess great time management skills

Apart from being competent in getting the best out of recruitment software, recruiters should be confident of their time management skills. Select a recruiter, who is:

Well-organized

Meticulous about getting the tasks completed

Able to save precious time from the previous schedule to meet the deadlines.

Hiring a recruiter, who values time is a great asset for the staffing agency; as it assists you to get maximum productivity from your agency.

Conclusion

Recruiting the best person is what defines the culture and environment of a staffing agency. Your agency is nothing but a collection of individuals, who are pushing themselves to hire the best and brightest people for your clients, making your business reach new heights. When you select the best recruiters, your task becomes easier as the right recruiters will be able to generate more revenue for you from the candidates selected.

How to Choose the Right Recruitment Software?

As a part of their hiring efforts most recruiters undertake the tasks of creating job descriptions, posting them on different job boards and social media platforms to get access to a wider range of talent pool. But, if they are not well-equipped to handle incoming applications in an organized manner, with the aid of a good recruitment software (or ATS), then the entire effort to attract top talent goes to waste.

But many recruiters are either unaware about modern recruitment software or don’t have the necessary budget to make use of a professional software. That is why a good and cost effective recruitment software is the need of the hour for recruiters in this candidate driven market. It boosts the recruitment efforts by streamlining social engagement, having an entire hiring workflow in a single integrated platform and sourcing. It also ensures that the candidate experience is superlative and that the internal hiring teams find recruitment an effortless task.

But, since getting a recruitment software is a huge decision for an organization, making one incorrect move can have an adverse effect on the entire hiring efforts put in by the recruiters. It can result in waste of time and money, lost talent and unhappy management. It can also lead to lots of frustration for the internal team due to their unsuccessful attempt to hire top talent.

To overcome this issue we have listed down 5 criteria that your recruitment software should meet.

1. Determine the exact use of a Recruitment Software in your organization

There are only a select few organizations that choose a software before making a full assessment of their needs and what exactly they want the software to do. A recruitment software can assist an organization in more ways than just screen resumes. Some of the other uses of an ATS include: sourcing of candidates, interviewing, reporting, communication with the applicant and job postings. Understanding the exact requirement of your organization, both current and projected for the future will help you to select the right recruitment software to meet your requirements.

According to Christy Hopkins, Human Resources Consultant and Writer at Fit Small Business, Choosing an ATS is important based on a few factors. First, what level of recruiting are you doing? If you are doing 10+ years experience recruiting or technical recruiting, you probably don’t need an ATS that also posts to job boards; you instead need one that integrates with LinkedIn and other ways to attract passive candidates. Next, you need to determine its purpose. Will it be active open positions, replacing current people, or creating a pipeline for future talent? If you need it for active positions, you will also want an ATS that posts to job boards and includes a customized careers website.

2. Integrates with other services

As a recruiter, you want your recruitment software to integrate with some other systems. Most of the times it would be an integration with your website so that you can source applicants directly from your corporate website. In other instances, you might want to connect your ATS with other business platforms, including social media accounts, email and CRM. This makes it critical to choose a tool that allows you to seamlessly integrate with different platforms.

A recruitment software that allows you to post jobs on your official social media channels, multiple job boards and on your career website with ease will be highly valuable tool for your hiring process, making it more streamlined and productive.

According to Roi Stone, Executive Vice President of TazWorks, “The goal of an ATS is to streamline your hiring process as much as possible, but that can’t happen if it doesn’t easily connect with your other software tools. Find out if they have an open API or what integrations are already built in so you can think about your employee management process holistically, rather than ending up with a fragmented system that doesn’t actually make your life easier.

3. Provides superlative candidate experience

Due to widespread use of technology, a recruitment software should have a great user interface and should be easy to navigate and use. There is no use of investing in a software that has a plethora of features, but has little real utility because of a clumsy interface.

A good recruitment software should have an intuitive design that makes it easier for recruiters to post job descriptions in an effortless manner and makes it easy for the candidates to apply for positions. It should also be easily accessible on a plethora of devices. In this age of mobile devices, responsiveness of the design is also critical.

According to Dorris Hollingsworth, President of Evergreen HR Group, “With current technology, most recruitment software will have the essential functions of retaining files, reporting, and candidate email communication. I focus on the candidate experience and the hiring manager experience in making my decision — you can’t afford to lose time and interest on either end of that process so a good user experience will increase both your pipeline and manager involvement. For high-volume recruiting (call centers, technicians, customer service), I look for a mobile application functionality to drive more traffic to the company.

4. Meets the compliance needs

It is crucial to select a recruitment software that meets the compliance needs. Recruiters and HR personnel spend sleepless nights worrying about legal compliances and there is a good reason for that. Failure to comply with the compliance can result in lots of extra paperwork and possibly result in your organization paying a hefty fine.

According to Lynnette Vollink, Director of Human Resources for automotive supplier Federal-Mogul’s Powertrain division, “An ATS should make it easy to stay compliant with the employment laws in the countries where the organization does business. We post to many different job boards across the globe and the ATS ensures we comply with varying labor laws in those countries, sometimes even in particular cities.

Conclusion

Choosing the right recruitment software is a time-consuming process as it should have all the requisites mentioned in this blog. However, whatever time it takes to get to the right software is worth it not only because a new software installation is a serious investment, but also because the right software can turbo charge your organizational growth by getting the right people on board.

To help you in your decision making we provide free trial of RecruitX, our recruitment software. You can signup for free and work with the product to see if fulfills the above criteria.