Recruiting and Talent Management Trends for 2005

It’s better to be prepared than surprised. Almost every pundit who has examined the year 2005 has come to the conclusion that it will be a year of dynamic change ó and there is no reason to expect that recruiting will be exempt from this rapid change. Unfortunately, recruiting is a field where managers and recruiters tend to react to events as opposed to forecasting and planning ahead for them. In my professional, consulting, and academic career, I have found that only a handful of firms and recruiting departments expect changes and have a logical, department-wide process for preparing for them. These preparations can range from elaborate forecasts and workforce plans to simpler “if/then” scenarios, where individual functional managers are presented with a series of “what if” situations and each is expected to be able to, on the spot, outline their response to the “what if” situation should it occur. As an individual practitioner ó regardless of what approach your department takes, and no matter how the busy you are ó if you expect to be successful and strategic, you need to prepare for a range of likely changes in both the business and the recruiting environment. If you are one of the few who are willing to take the time to be prepared rather than surprised, here are some trends you are likely to see and read about in the upcoming year. 17 Hot (and Getting Hotter) Trends in Recruiting and Talent Management

An increased emphasis on assessment. After sourcing, assessment is the highest impact area in traditional recruiting. If, for example, you recruited Tiger Woods but rejected him because “he wore that silly Nike cap throughout the interview,” you will certainly not end up with a large number of high quality hires. Some of the hot areas you can expect in assessment include online technical skill assessments, the increased use of simulations (online and during interviews), improving the screening of diversity candidates, and better metrics to identify and validate the most effective screening tools and approaches.

Internet networking emerges. Although still in its infancy, expect firms and vendors to continue to explore whether Internet “social” networks can become an effective sourcing tool. I’m pessimistic myself, but this is a new area worth following. Internet blogs are another area with unproven potential.
The emergence of workforce planning. As the business environment and the world economy continue to change at a rapid rate (in particular, expect impacts from trade deficits, the strength of the dollar, government deficits, and increased free trade), recruiting and talent management managers will be forced to shift their focus to the future. That means an increased emphasis on forecasting, and workforce planning that is integrated into every aspect of recruiting and retention.
A focus on internal redeployment. Perhaps the most ignored area of recruiting and talent management is the internal movement of employees to the “right job at the right time.” Companies like Motorola and Microsoft have already done pioneer work in this area, but other firms will soon realize that recruiting can play a key role in moving key talent more rapidly within the organization. The proactive movement of employees to the “right job at the right time” increases retention, development, and employee productivity.
Employment branding. External employment branding is literally the only effective long-term recruiting strategy available to directors of recruiting. Top firms like Starbucks, Intel, Cisco, Marriott, Dell, Wal-Mart, and Microsoft have been focusing on employment branding for years, but expect other firms to jump on the bandwagon. There is literally nothing you can do that will have a greater long-term strategic impact than being talked about in the media for being a well-managed firm that is also a good place to work. Work closely with product branding, PR, and marketing to help develop an effective employment branding strategy.
An increased focus on “selling.” As the economy turns around, candidates will have many more job choices. Convincing them to take your job will become extremely difficult. New strategies and approaches will have to be developed (or revived from the ’90s) to “sell” candidates on applying to your firm and get them to accept your offers.
A laser focus on the employed top performer. The time has finally come when the majority of recruiting and hiring managers will begin to focus the majority of their resources on finding currently employed top performers (some use the term “passive job seeker”). Because employed top performers are harder to convince, increased emphasis will be placed on market research tools to identify their job-switch criteria.
A renewed focus on the most effective sources. The slowdown in recruiting during the last few years has allowed recruiting managers to get sloppy about identifying the best sources for candidates. The new hiring boom will force corporate recruiting managers to use metrics to identify the best recruiting sources for top performers. Most will find their very best sources for top performers to be targeted employee referrals, professional referrals, professional events, external employment branding, and Internet search engines that find information on candidates when they have not posted a resume. This also means a continued trend toward the decreased use of newspaper ads, brochures, ineffective job sites, and job fairs.
Tying recruiting and retention together. As the economy improves and employee engagement continues to drop, expect turnover among top performers to skyrocket (one recent study showed 75% of employees are now willing to look for new job). Unless HR departments begin focusing on identifying individuals at risk of quitting and eliminating the causes of their frustration, recruiting will be stretched beyond its limits.
A continued emphasis on outsourcing. Although most outsourcing has failed to demonstrate its ROI, the continued emphasis on cost cutting and the need for a more strategic focus will keep this a hot area. Wise managers will examine outsourcing in the area of referral administration, “name identification,” reference checking, and ATS outsourcing.
Globalization finally arrives. This year will mark the point where actions will finally overcome the talk about the need to recruit globally. Recruiting managers should soon expect to be asked to include at least one global candidate in every key search. Recruiting will also be asked by senior management where the work (and the workforce) should be placed around the globe in order to maximize productivity.
A renewed focus on the contingent workforce. As hiring ramps up, conservative CFOs will expect recruiting managers to have a plan to ensure that your firm can quickly “release” a percentage of the workforce should the economy falter. This means an increased emphasis on the use of employment contracts, part-timers, retirees, temps, and contract workers.
Referrals remain king. Despite all the talk and the real advances in technology, nothing will come close to the effectiveness of a “no tech,” proactive referral program, where you directly ask your top employees to identify, screen, and pre-sell the best in their field.
Emerging new technology arrives. Vendors have finally begun to realize that the current generation of technology has only made a minimal impact on recruiting. Expect new technologies and approaches that will finally begin to meet their initial promise of revolutionizing recruiting. Recruiting managers must demand technology that’s smart and that learns from its successes and mistakes. They should also expect new breakthroughs in Internet search engines, candidate assessment, strategic metrics, and resume sorting technology.
A focus on leadership positions. As more senior leaders retire, there will be increased emphasis on recruiting “potential leaders” from top firms both within and outside your industry. Expect firms to target companies like GE, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Ikea, SC Johnson, Pepsi, American Express, FedEx, Southwest Air, IBM, McKinsey, Toyota, and even the military.
Strategic metrics become king. This will be the breakthrough year when the focus will finally shift away from distracting and low impact “tactical” metrics (cost per hire, time to fill, number of hires, etc.) and toward more strategic metrics like quality of hire, hiring from competitors, ROI, and workforce productivity.
Corporate websites reawaken? After too many years of boring, ineffective, and often embarrassing corporate websites…expect nothing to happen. This is unfortunately remains true, because until one firm creates a breakthrough website, no one else will have the courage to act in this follow-the-leader field.

In addition to the above, you should also expect:

Continued difficulties in recruiting in industries like healthcare, retail, the military, construction, and high-tech
Continued pressure to cut the administrative burden in recruiting
Managers to continue to blame recruiting for all recruiting and retention problems, even though managers are often at fault
High-volume hiring (as a result of corporate growth and higher turnover) that will overwhelm your current systems
Difficulty in recruiting and retaining great recruiters
Corporate recruiting departments to operate without well-developed and communicated recruiting strategies
Continued difficulties in getting managers to pay attention to recruiting as their workload increases
More consolidation in the large job board firms
The renewed war for talent to become the buzz word of the year
Recruiting advertising agencies to continue their transition into recruiting consulting firms
Nothing new from the EEOC or in legal restrictions on recruiting
No change in the dismal, behind-the-times field of college recruiting
Google and Wachovia to be emerging benchmark firms in recruiting

Conclusion I hope that you find this list of trends helpful in preparing for the future. Whether you agree with each of them or not, the key lesson to be learned is that you need to be constantly looking ahead rather than just reacting to events. Once you adopt the philosophy that it’s better to be prepared than surprised, you are already well on your way to becoming more important and strategic. Knowing about the future is only the first step. If you fail to act, no amount of warning or forecasts will have any impact.