Every January, companies across the world meet the new year with excitement and anticipation! Recruiters for these companies, though? Well, let’s just say that they view the new year as one full of tasks, interviews, candidate searches, and so much more. If you caught our blog earlier this month (the one about hiring at the end of the year from December 6th), then you know that some recruiters are starting to focus on hiring at the end of the year, but, until that movement really takes hold, the biggest hiring surge of the year still takes place in January and February.
With 2024 barreling towards us at breakneck speed, what trends and technology are hiring managers talking about? How will recruitment and retention look in the coming year? Today, we’re going to look at what has the recruitment industry buzzing in the months to come and year ahead!
Coming Soon!!
As the recruitment industry has seen for the past few years, there is a growing trend to focus on, not just hiring top talent, but also retaining them. While everyone hopes the current economic upheavals will calm soon, those same people understand that it is better to prepare for the worst. Therefore, many of the new trends and tricks for 2024 are meant to bring new workers into the fold, while simultaneously improving the experiences of those already working for the company. It is a delicate balancing act, but one trend that recruiters better begin preparing for right away.
AI’s… Introduction?Who are we kidding? AI is already playing a role in the recruitment industry; it is doing so right this very minute. The current uses include helping to develop job descriptions, sorting through candidate communications, and helping create fair and equitable interview questions. On the “fair and equitable” side, using AI allows recruiters to revolutionize the entire process by removing any unconscious bias from the job description and reading any candidate assessments, and, in doing so, helps to knock out inequities in the industry. The amount of personalization AI can also lend to the process makes every candidate feel valued and wanted. However, there are plans to further adapt this technology to delve into other areas involving recruitment. It seems that AI is also potentially becoming something akin to a virtual assistant as well, with some AI tackling everything from scheduling appointments for recruiters and HR managers to performing matching assessments on potential candidates.
With all of the excitement AI brings to recruitment and retention, it is important to remember that this technology is still under development, and many companies, governments, and workers have concerns about its potential impacts. What everyone seems to agree on, though, is that AI will continue to expand its uses in the recruitment industry.
Renewed Interest in Employee ExperienceFrom diversity and inclusion measures to investments in employee experience platforms, companies are finding it easier to attract the best candidates with these methods and more like them. More and more often, businesses are finding that workers want more than just compensation; employees want both themselves and their jobs to have intrinsic value. Companies see that transparent communication through the entire recruitment process shows candidates an honest glimpse into the workings of the business they are applying to, instilling more trust in the potential employee. This communication stretches from the initial approach and application to the interview, follow-up, and, hopefully!, the onboarding process. Other efforts include hiring a dedicated DEI expert, providing unconscious bias training to office workers, and pulling together a diverse panel of managers for every interview. With this process becoming more inclusive, whether through the use of AI or other DEI measures, companies are working quickly to show employees and potential employees that their workplace values each of them.
Employer branding efforts will also continue to trend in 2024. As stated just above, it is important for companies to showcase their efforts to improve the lives of their employees. By pairing that work with displaying how the company has value for the wider world, an employer brand is born. It takes a dedicated team to build an employer brand, but recruiters have to understand it and how to market it to their candidate pool.
Data-Driven HiringAll recruiters and hiring managers understand the cost of making a bad hire. While some new employees just don’t fit in and find better opportunities elsewhere, a string of failed new hires can indicate that something is broken in the process. For those businesses attempting to fix what is broken, data-driven recruiting is the newest trend to hit the recruitment and retention industry, and it should be one that grows exponentially in the coming year. Data-driven recruiting is the realization that data is the key to building strategic hiring teams. By allowing HR technology, software that analyzes data from people like Sapia.ai or Crunchr, to work in tandem with recruiters, the heavy lifting and manual labor can be handled, allowing the hiring team to focus on interviews and onboarding their new employees. In its broadest sense, data-driven hiring has always been around, but with new tools to help make gathering and processing data easier, it is allowing for more qualitative, in-depth looks at potential workers before they are brought in. This will improve retention and minimize the number of bad hires a company makes.
This also means that another trend we will be seeing in 2024 is the growth of hires skilled in data and analytics. Recruitmentmarketing.com predicts over 10,000 jobs to be created in this sector over the rest of the 2020s, marking a 23% increase over the last decade. Many businesses are hoping to use data and analytics to improve all facets of the business, not just the recruitment and retention side. Therefore, we will be seeing more and more jobs opening up for those who know how to use analytics programs and those who know how to gather and interpret data.
Conclusion
Getting excited for what the new year holds in store is something so many people do, and recruitment and human resources professionals are no exception. The important trends mentioned above are all going to be gaining traction into the 2024 year, and there are so many more that there was simply no time to delve into.
Who knows what will happen next? With the recruitment and retention industry constantly changing and evolving, it is important for professionals in these fields to continue to read, research, and discuss the trends that will change our industry!
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Meaghan Goldberg covers recruitment and digital marketing for Lionzone. A Patterson, GA native, after graduating from both Valdosta State University and Middle Tennessee State University, Meaghan joined Lionzone in 2018 as a digital recruitment strategist before becoming the social media manager.
Resources:
https://www.lever.co/blog/recruiting-trends/
https://hrexecutive.com/these-3-trends-will-impact-recruiting-in-2024-according-to-gartner/
https://info.recruitics.com/blog/recruitment-marketing-trends-for-2024
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exploring-trailblazing-recruitment-trends-2024-pioneering-path/
