Recruitment Trends in 2020

In the era of 5G, innovations, and technology. The use of AI in recruitment isn’t a trend. Because trends tend to blow over at some point. Hope you can remember how Rainbow loom and Figgit spinners became a sensation overnight that every parent wanted to buy them for their kids on Christmas, they were in huge demand before the craze surpassed, and no one cares now.

ATS came in demand a few decades ago and new innovations are up in recruitment tech every day. As for AI, it is becoming a must-have in the recruiter’s toolbox. Think of the application of artificial intelligence in pre-employment assessments, conversational chatbots, or video interviewing tools for instance. AI can help in automating a repetitive task done by a recruiter daily and make it easier for HR professionals and recruiters. We have analyzed a few interesting points which will be popular in the upcoming decade;

1. Automated Candidate Sourcing

Finding talent starts with sourcing potential candidates and building a pipeline. But even if you know where to find those potential candidates (job boards, social media, etc.), this can be quite a challenging – and time-consuming – task.

Developments in AI for recruitment now enable recruiters to automate their sourcing process and extend their reach at the same time; certain solutions can analyze more than 300 million social profiles.

Communication with active candidates is quite a time consuming, the sourcing automation technology is also able to send personalized messages to candidates in the pipeline to keep them engaged.

2. Discovering talented Passive Candidates

Let’s stick with the candidate pipeline a little longer. Sometimes, we’ve got so many profiles in our database that certain potentially interesting candidates just end up getting buried.

Especially in today’s job market, where many companies struggle to find top talent, this is a shame – those great candidates may be there, right in front of you already!

Rather than spending a lot of time and money on finding ‘fresh talent’ and trying to get them interested in your company, you could get in touch with candidates that already know your business and have shown interest in the past. Several providers use AI technology to screen your existing candidate pool for past candidates that could be a good fit for a new role.

3. Matching the Right Candidate

Another interesting use of AI in recruitment can be found in the candidate matching part of the process. This ‘tailor-made’ element is something we’ve been seeing for a while now across various parts of the HR function. Employee learning and development (L&D) is a good example of this.

L&D programs are becoming more and more customized to the needs of individual employees. Not only in terms of their content but also in the way that content is delivered to employees (some may prefer a desktop version, others rather use their smartphones, etc.).

Now AI technology is also being used to optimize the prospect, meaning to understand what jobs and type of content your prospects are interested in. It’s possible to track candidate behavior on your website and then automatically send them customized content and messages based on their interests.

4. Internal/ Employee Referrals

Referrals worked earlier and references work now as well. In today’s job-seeker driven market, recruiters and hiring managers need to work smart to get that top talent through the door.

One of the ways to do so is, as we mentioned above, releasing the power of the forgotten profiles in your existing talent pool.

Another great way to hire high-quality people is via your existing employees. Referred new hires are often a better (culture) fit, they are more engaged, less likely to leave, and they are more productive.

AI technology is now taking employee referrals to the next level. It helps companies to proactively identify the best passive talent in your workforce’s network and automatically engages the right employee to refer.

5. Hiring a Diverse Workforce

AI may be a hot topic in recruitment land, but so is diversity hiring. A diverse workforce has a lot of proven advantages for companies:

• It improves employee happiness, productivity, and retention
• It improves innovation and creativity
• It’s positive for your employer brand
• It increases your workforce’s range of skills, talents & experiences

Most of the companies are now opting for equality when hiring the staff, some companies have even built a 50/50 ratio of men and women in the workforce.

This is why it’s a good thing that there are quite a few providers out there offering AI-driven solutions to help recruiters with their diversity hiring efforts..

This can mean various things, from using an AI-powered chatbot and pre-employment assessments to blind hiring and writing inclusive job adverts. 

6. Customized Employee Value Propositions

Most companies currently have an EVP (Employee Value Proposition); a unique set of benefits that an employee receives in return for the skills, capabilities, and experience they bring to a company.

Every employee is different, so while a specific set of benefits may be perfect for one employee, it may not quite work for another. Thanks to AI (analyzing personalities, among other things) it could soon be possible for companies to offer an EVP that’s adapted not just to their various candidate personas, but to each individual applicant.    

7. Natural Language Processing

Although natural language processing techniques have been used by HR for several decades, there is still a lot more that can be done with it.

The most well-known and straightforward example of natural language processing (put simply: text analysis) in recruitment is probably the use of Boolean keyword searches to identify good resumes.

Among other things, NLP can help with resume classification, ranking, deep extraction, identification and semi-automation in the recruitment process.  

8. Analyzing Facial Expressions

The video interviews are a great tool to use for remote and non-remote candidates too.

Because even if the candidate lives close to your company’s offices, a video interview can save both them and you a lot of time. And yet, it still allows you to get a feel for someone’s energy, the way they present themselves, etc., as well as an option to review the interview multiple times.

The technology can analyze a candidate’s facial expressions during the video interview, hence capturing their mood, and assess their personality traits.