By Keisha Ward, courtesy of SBAM Approved Partner ASE
The current year offered challenges, wins and opportunities for many, but what should talent acquisition teams expect in 2017? Market researchers and industry experts suggest that the areas for upcoming challenges, wins and opportunities will be found in mergers and acquisitions among social networking giants. Changes will also be felt in increased hiring demands versus stagnant company budgets, process automation and how talent data is tracked.
Researchers say the recent acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft was a prime indicator of changes to come in 2017. The $26.2 billion acquisition, left many job seekers and recruiters to wonder – what does this mean for me? Rightfully so, staffing professionals and seekers rely heavily on LinkedIn as a key resource in talent acquisition. According to an article found on theprofit.com, two-thirds of LinkedIn’s business comes from recruiting. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner publicly announced that the partnership with Microsoft will offer many advancements. If all goes as planned people will have the ability to combine resume edits with a LinkedIn profile. Individuals will soon be able to open their resume in Word, make edits and instantly discover and apply to new job matches on LinkedIn.
New research also indicates that talent acquisition teams should prepare to hire more in 2017 with the same budget used in 2016. Incorporating automation into the recruiting process will help meet the increased hiring demands. SHRM.org shared findings from a LinkedIn report indicating that one-fourth of respondents ranked using automated sourcing tools as the top trend shaping the recruiting industry during the next five to ten years. This trend is driven by the increased need to hire more on a limited budget. Allison Schnidman, senior market research manager at LinkedIn, says, “Automation would increase the speed of screening candidates, minimize human bias and help assess soft skills more precisely.”
Big data tops the list of things to watch for in 2017. Big data is merely the process of examining large amounts of data to gather information and determine trends. In other words, it tells a story and enables companies to accurately forecast and plan for success. “Big data truly is altering the recruitment method in a way that not only makes it more efficient but affords recruiters and hiring companies far greater insight into the recruitment market as a whole,” said Jamie Little, principal consultant with Bateman Fox. Jamie suggests mining the internet to learn more about behaviors. If companies can generate a report that lists where specific candidates, i.e. engineers spend most of their time online, recruiters can then conduct informed searches by posting their position on sites regularly visited by their talent pool. Moreover, Jamie believes that recruiters can attain a far greater understanding of the person that has submitted their resume.
Similar to 2016, the year to come will offer opportunities to utilize creativity in talent sourcing and will require recruiters to engage heavily in social media and data tools more than ever. In 2017 talent acquisition teams need to locate a larger number of candidates during a time when many people are actively employed. Thus, they will be required to research where their talent spends time online socially and professionally and find them there. In order to have a successful year, recruiters should also be prepared to meet candidate’s needs through company branding, innovation and flexibility.