2024 marked a pivotal moment in recruitment trends. Remote work and fully online processes have increasingly become the norm. This has forced HR departments to rapidly adopt automated recruitment processes to improve the candidate experience, and made moving as much of the recruitment process as possible online absolutely necessary.
Employers are now open to hiring the best talent from anywhere in the world with the switch to remote work. Similarly, the best candidates are carefully watching how employers cope with the changes brought about by the pandemic. They are paying close attention to employer branding as they consider their next moves.
Though many HR departments were making strides in these areas before this year, 2024 will bring even more of these recruitment trends. As businesses work to survive by cutting costs and attracting top talent from a global applicant pool for new hires, effectively addressing these trends will be increasingly imperative.
In summary, to stay ahead of recruitment trends in 2024, focus on the following:
- Automate the recruitment process as much as you can. Move your interviews and career fairs online to reach the widest audience. Once you’ve hired new employees, save time with digital contract signing and by automating your candidate onboarding processes.
- Rely on technology to sift through qualified candidates and manage the process. Doing this saves man-hours, which translates into significant savings.
- Source highly-qualified candidates internationally using global job portals like GrabJobs.
- Use interview chatbots and CRM systems to engage with potential hires and improve the candidate experience. This will enable you to attract and keep the best talent.
- Focus your employer branding message on adaptability and resilience. Your reputation, how you’ve managed change in the face of this pandemic, and how well your current staff has been cared for will be top of mind for new recruits.
Top Recruitment Trend #1 - Accelerated shift from offline to online recruitment.
What We Learned from the last year
Top tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Uber decided a couple of months into the pandemic that they wouldn’t move to bring employees back into offices until late summer of 2021. Other companies, including Twitter, have said they’d allow employees who wanted to work from home to continue to do so indefinitely.
Like most functions that can take place virtually, the hiring process has moved almost entirely online. These high-tech processes had already begun making a transition to the online space before Covid struck. As we saw in 2020, however, the pandemic rapidly escalated this process.
Accelerated Adoption of Digital Recruitment Technology in 2024
Recruitment teams have abandoned in-person interviews, contract signing, and onboarding in favor of handling them exclusively online. In fact, within the early days of the pandemic, video interviewing spiked dramatically, increasing by 524% in a few short weeks. By accelerating the move to complete the entire hiring process remotely, businesses stand to save time and money over traditional in-person methods.
Virtual job fairs also quickly replaced offline job fairs as companies work to recruit new hires more efficiently. Old habits die hard, and there is still some lingering hesitation at removing the opportunity to build a relationship in person, but many recruiters believe that virtual job fairs are worth the time and effort to coordinate.
Even if you don’t plan to hire immediately, online job fairs are a great way to sift through a pool of candidates and take note of those you might like to keep an eye on.
Most interviewees, too, appreciate the opportunity to meet with several employers in a relatively short space of time without the angst and hassle of in-person events. The return on time and investment will continue to make virtual job fairs attractive for recruiters and recruits.
How Can You Make the Shift to Digital Recruitment Technologies?
The simplest way to determine whether moving your hiring process online makes sense is by calculating how much it costs your firm to hire a new recruit. Then figure out if that justifies the costs of moving those services online. To do this, you’ll need to:
- Evaluate each step of your recruitment process. Break down how much manpower is dedicated to each hire at every stage and assign a figure to it.
- From there, evaluate new digital recruitment technology that can help you streamline these recruitment processes and bring them fully online. Prioritise moving the tasks that cost you the most time and human resources online to see how much you’ll save.
- You may need to try out a few different products to find what you’re looking for, but most SaaS companies will offer free trials to test out their services.
- Once you’ve settled on which tools work best for your firm, make a plan to fully integrate the new recruitment technology and migrate your recruitment process online.
Top Recruitment Trend #2 - Rise in Recruitment Process Automation
What We Learned from the last year
One of the most effective ways to reduce costs is by automating tasks. If you’ve already started the automation process, you may have room to improve. A CareerBuilder survey found that even though half of the firms surveyed already use AI to find and screen potential hires, HR managers still lose about 14 hours per week to tasks that could be automated.
As a way to cut 2020 costs, many firms rushed to automate some or most recruitment processes. Before the pandemic, some of those same firms had lagged behind in automating recruitment processes. To survive and adapt, automation is essential.
Recruitment Process Automation Saves Time and Cost
Moving into 2024, and hopefully the aftermath of the pandemic, companies will only continue to move towards candidate screening automation to save time and money as they look to acquire new talent.
As an example, look at Uniqlo. The company determined viable candidates, increased the interview show-up rate, and saved almost $40,000 in HR expenses per year. Automating the recruitment process saved the equivalent work of 219 days that it would have otherwise taken to go through the 10,000 applicants.
How Do You Automate Recruitment Processes in 2024?
Recruitment automation is vast and comes in many accessible forms. Interview chatbots, interview scheduling, and candidate screening, for example, can all be done without significant human involvement. This ensures that HR managers only spend time reviewing qualified candidates.
With GrabJobs, for example, it’s possible to sift through an entire applicant pool by setting a few parameters. If the applicant passes typical screening questions delivered by the interview chatbot, HR personnel are notified. Then, the applicant can schedule a final interview. Compare that to going through tons of CV submissions by hand, and you’ll quickly see how valuable recruitment process automation can be.
Some people caution that the recruitment process shouldn’t be entirely removed from human interaction. Otherwise, it may feel too clinical. However, on the flip side, refusing to adopt hiring automation processes may cause firms to lose candidates to tech-savvy competitors. It’s important to start moving towards recruitment process automation if you haven’t already.
To successfully implement recruitment process automation, you’ll need to accomplish the following:
- Determine how many stages /hours of your current recruitment process can be automated.
- Based on what you pay your HR staff, put a price on how much this costs your firm. You can use our Recruitment Cost Calculator to get a better idea of how much recruitment process automation may be able to save your firm.
- Look into the cost of the recruitment technology that you’ll need to automate the process.
The anticipated return on your investment should be more than enough to justify the transition. Completing the process as soon as possible is essential if you expect to compete for the best talent in 2022.
Top Recruitment Trend #3 - Increase in Global Talent Sourcing
What we learned from the last year
In September, Enterprise Technology Research conducted a survey of top CIOs from a broad sampling of 1,200 companies in various industries worldwide. While about 72% of their global workforce currently works from home, they expect that 34.4% of their companies’ workforce will continue to work from home through 2021, or double the number of people who worked remotely before the pandemic. Forbes predicts that we’ll see a 300% increase from pre-pandemic numbers in the number of people who choose to work remotely.
Overall, IT decision-makers have been pleased with the efficiency and productivity of remote workers. Once hiring freezes are released and companies have the opportunity to invest in additional IT infrastructure, many indicate that hiring an increasingly remote workforce will continue to be a priority.
Work-from-home has broken down borders
Location is no longer a limiting factor for employers or employees. This has given rise to an increase in global talent sourcing and the desire to hire remote workers. Since the only constraint is now a stable high-speed internet connection, why not choose from the widest pool of capable talent?
Global talent sourcing opens up tremendous opportunities for remote workers, especially as companies work to hire the best people in a given field. Embracing this recruitment trend in 2024 will continue to put employers in the best position to acquire the best talent.
How do you source candidates globally?
The most effective way to incorporate global talent sourcing is by working with online job portals. You can automate job posting on sites worldwide and go from there to stay on top of this current recruitment trend. Here are the top five global job portals where you should begin talent sourcing:
- GrabJobs.co is one of the top global job boards, operating in more than 24 major countries. Employers can connect with millions of applicants who are searching through thousands of available positions. On GrabJobs, employers enjoy an efficient, cutting edge recruitment automation platform that helps you eliminate repetitive, traditional hiring tasks.
- Indeed.com is a well-known job site that boasts over 250 million unique visitors each month, ideal for global talent sourcing. Employers have over 25 million jobs listed on Indeed, with the opportunity to sponsor listings to attract the best talent. Indeed also offers a programmatic job advertising platform called Indeed IQ.
- Linkedin.com started as a professional landing page for individuals to manage their own personal brand. The platform has evolved to meet individuals’ and companies’ business needs and desires. Browsing users’ LinkedIn profiles enables companies to identify top talent and offer those people various employment opportunities.
- Jooble.com is an online job board dedicated to global candidate sourcing. With over 1.5 million jobs listed, Jooble.com is a great way to search for candidates looking for their dream job.
- Talent.com is an online job board dedicated to global candidate sourcing. Although talent.com does not offer native recruitment automation, it does integrate with other automated recruitment services. They help to match over 75 million monthly visitors worldwide with employment opportunities, including individuals looking to work from home.
In addition, companies will likely continue to attract top talent through social media platforms and virtual career fairs. Capitalising on global talent sourcing is one of the most important recruitment trends that we can learn from 2020 moving forward.
Top Recruitment Trend #4 - Companies invest in candidate experience
What We Learned from the last year
As businesses move increasingly online, the online marketplace will become even more competitive. The difference between a good website and a great one—just like the difference between good and great online stores—will come down to the details. Having great content and quality products alone will not be enough to satisfy customers. Ultimately, it will come down to whoever provides the best user experience.
Similarly, as qualified applicants find themselves open to new opportunities around the world, recruitment trends indicate that potential employers must step up their recruitment automation processes. From the initial job application to candidate onboarding, companies must provide the best experience to attract and hire the best candidates.
Companies that work to enhance the candidate experience were better able to quickly adapt and shield themselves from the worst effects of the risks from fundamental shifts that the pandemic caused. Forbes predicts that in 2021, HR managers will get better support from better tools that will help them analyse and act on data from their workforce.
Companies with Great Candidate Experience Will Win
Going forward, as candidates can apply to an almost limitless number of companies, companies must provide the most efficient recruitment process to snag the best workers. Employing a Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) system, for example, makes sure that neither party is wasting their time. Nurturing top talent that is ready when positions open can save you time and money throughout the hiring process.
Another way to attract top talent down the line is through word-of-mouth and referrals. Most candidates with a positive experience would refer other potential hires. Similarly, more than half of people pleased with your company’s candidate experience would happily tell their social networks about it.
Live chat allows candidates to interact with potential employers on-the-go as needed. To close out the process, automated onboarding systems are necessary for a proactive induction process. Simple Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are no longer enough to ensure optimal candidate engagement. Stepping up the technology to provide a better candidate experience will be increasingly necessary since companies will need to aggressively engage the best candidates.
How Do You Enhance the Candidate Experience in 2024?
These are five of the top ways that you can implement a great candidate experience in 2024:
- Use a CRM to nurture top talent, maintain a pipeline of well-qualified applicants, keep them interested in your company, and fill positions faster.
- Improve job description copywriting. Pay attention to details and invest additional time to interest better candidates.
- Use interview chatbots to quickly respond to candidates and improve the overall candidate experience.
- Engage candidates with live chat to have real conversations and thoroughly screen applicants.
- Employ automated candidate onboarding systems to facilitate timely and consistent communication.
The ability to work remotely has given workers and employers the ability to select the best candidates from all over the world without the previous limitation of location. Without a thorough and engaging candidate experience, companies will miss out on the best talent.
