After suffering a severe blow due to COVID-19, industries are gearing up to broaden their hiring strategies and adopt latest trends to cope with the future demands and needs. Recruiting trends have changed over time and so did the tools and technologies involved in it. From hiring virtually and remotely to using chatbots and AI to broadening the potential talent pool, every sector, especially the IT sector, is determined to get their recruitment game on point by adopting every possible recent trend. Advanced technological recruiting strategies now incorporate aggregation, trend identification, visualization and predictive analytics as standard measures for IT recruitment.
New Trends in IT Recruitment
In this article, we have listed eight huge ongoing and emerging trends that you should definitely take note of. Checkout here for strategies to find more leading IT recruitment Canada for a seamless recruiting experience:
#1 AI-Powered Recruiter Chatbots
The use of AI to improve ways to source, identify and engage talent has become a crucial part in IT recruitment. AI-powered recruiter chatbots have become a hit trend in this process. They accelerate the hiring process and improve the candidate experience by providing real-time user-friendly and accurate interactions with them. They also provide details to the candidates about jobs while they search. Whereas, the interview chatbots enable the candidates to have a seamless experience in filling the form while applying for the interview. In fact, the chatbots even guide the candidates if they are stuck at any point. Moreover, using chatbots prevent bias from candidate identification, selection and hiring.
#2 Remote work & Remote interviewing
One of the most sought-after trends in IT recruitment is remote hiring. Companies are benefiting by augmenting their talent pool beyond geographical and cultural boundaries, and that too at minimal expenditure. Flexible schedules, work-from-home policies, advanced multi-communication tools and technologies, along with virtual offices and virtual reality work environments are a great support in managing remote teams.
In addition, long-distance remote interviewing has become a new norm. Numerous video conferencing software including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, and specialized video interviewing tools such as HireVue and Montage have gained huge importance. These platforms also enable recruiters to conduct interviews conveniently by collaborating with their other colleagues or departments of the organisation to ensure a mutual selection process. This process has reduced hiring time, the risk for bias and has been proved cost-effective.
#3 Natural Language Processing(NLP)
The most important trend shaping IT recruitment is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for sourcing, assessing, and screening employees. By using natural language processing (NLP) tools, companies have improved their hiring process to save more time. It offers automated resume screening and processing, personalized communication and interaction with potential candidates with the latest chatbot technology and enhances automated interviews by analyzing the speech patterns and facial expressions of the candidates, and reviewing their interviews to ensure best fit in the company.
#4 Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics and Recommender systems are now playing a crucial role in the recruitment processes by using data to make future predictions, hiring decisions and in workforce planning. The use of predictive analytics enables more targeted and faster hiring by identifying the best-fit candidates and suitable profile-matching based on factors like location, past experience, education and relationship networks. It goes as far as to predict and prevent turnover, offer best opportunities to candidates and even to the ones not seeking new opportunities or, in other words, tap into a dormant talent pool, provide better candidate experience, prevent potential resignation, plan smart and effective sourcing and last but not the least, hold enormous amount data on the employees to assess their behavioural patterns better.
#5 Diversity and inclusion
Recruiters in tech industries are focusing more to increase their workforce diversity and create an inclusive workplace in order to embolden their overall productivity and profitability. Statistics show that industries, especially tech ones, have inappropriate minority hiring rates as per the general population which is why HR departments, staffing agencies, and recruiting firms are exclusively dedicated to identifying and bringing a diverse range of candidates into the talent pool. Organizations are also seeking more representation in gender, race, and other similar demographics, for which they are tailoring job postings, reshaping the language in job descriptions to be more gender-neutral and reaching out to diverse community groups through advertisements.
#6 Gamification in recruitment
Gamification has become a popular trend in recruitment not only in the tech industry but also in various other industries. Using gamification enables recruiters to test their candidate at both personal and professional levels, stay relevant in the market and make the conventional hiring process more feasible, stress-free, interactive and time-saving. It helps the recruiters to gain deep insights of the candidates and engage their employees through game algorithms, structure, tests, assignments, puzzle-solving and other such creative modes.
#7 Social Media for recruitment
The power of social media for talent acquisition and recruitment processes has been greatly employed by different industries, especially tech industries. Numerous social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Bumble, Instagram and LinkedIn are grabbing candidate’s attention for potential job opportunities through their recruiting hashtags, eye-catching content such as videos, as part of recruitment marketing to build up their recruiting clout. With increased mobile usage and on-the-go interactions, companies are turning to such platforms to hunt for high-quality candidates, while remaining in touch with them through mail and other messaging applications. This is quite appealing for the younger generation as witnessed through the rise of Instagram’s popularity as a recruiting tool to 37% from 18% in 2017.
#8 Focus on Soft Skills
More and more industries are focusing on the candidates having soft skills such as creativity, persuasion, teamwork, collaboration, adaptability, time management, emotional intelligence, communication, critical observation and problem-solving. Another soft skill in great demand is the candidate’s ability to build large networks across various industries and sectors. This is because at least two-thirds of jobs heavily rely on soft skills like communication & empathy, however, unfortunately, experts say that the current skill deficit will probably grow around 29 million by 2030. Hence, recruiters have become aware and are adopting new strategies as well as experimenting with AI models and overall performance KPIs to prioritise not just hard skills but also take into account the soft skills in order to gain deeper insights into the quality of their hires.
Author Bio:
Sunny Chawla is a Managing Director at Alliance Recruitment Agency. He specializes in helping clients for international recruiting, staffing, HR services and Careers advice service for overseas and international businesses.
