Their predictions cover recruitment and talent relationship management, the role soft skills and personality assessments play in recruitment, the impact of remote working and the best HR technologies.
Nicolas Speeckaert, Managing Partner at skeeled says, “The world of work has been profoundly affected by COVID-19 and HR professionals have had to lead the way as businesses suddenly switched to remote work to ensure business continuity. Many reacted to the disruption with a resilient attitude and proved, with the right strategies, they were able to adapt and reinvent. Now it’s time to turn the lessons learnt into actionable strategies that will help businesses thrive this year.”
Below are some of the key trends highlighted by the panel:
Organisational Agility & the Gig Economy
Hung Lee, Editor of Leading Industry Newsletter, Recruiting Brainford
Covid-19 has taught companies they need to increase their organisational agility and diversify their workforce. This means hiring fewer permanent full-time employees and making far greater use of skills and labour which can be supplied on a non-FTE basis – such as contractors, freelancers, gig workers. HR and talent acquisition needs to expand its scope beyond employees on the payroll to think about the entire talent universe available.
Recruiter tailored technology
Katrina Collier, Author: The Robot-Proof Recruiter, Speaker & Facilitator
Talent acquisition technology is increasingly supporting recruitment. Companies that benefit the most will be those that implement technology that has been built by recruiters or with their direct input, and which has proven to save time, money and frustration for recruiters, candidates and hiring partners.
Rather than jumping to purchase the latest tech because it is on trend or accepting the technology the IT or HR departments think is best for talent acquisition, it’s better for companies listen to their recruiters to ensure that the TA technology will assist in bringing in the right people to the organisation to help it succeed.
Hiring for Soft Skills & Personality and Eliminating Bias & Discrimination
Bas van de Haterd, Recruitment Improver, Van de Haterd Consultancy
2020 will shape the future of recruitment because of two crises - the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. The pandemic has increased the number of applicants chasing roles. Next to this, working from home has proven to work and will become work from anywhere. For many organisations this will mean they can recruit remote workers from all over the world.
This calls for a selection based on skills, personality and things that matter. Companies will increasingly look more at skills and personality traits, rather than CVs.
In 2021, companies will increasingly use pre-selection screening technology to screen talent, because of the large number of applicants for every role, because they are hiring internationally and know little about those regions and because legislation will determine that they need to select more fairly.
Skills and Potential versus Credentials
Jeanne Achille, Conference Chair, Spring 2021 HR Technology Conference & Exposition
Candidates’ credentials will become less important and employers will increasingly take into account their non-traditional education and work experience. Recruiters need to train hiring managers to look at a candidate’s breadth of skills and potential versus years of service for a competitor. Plus, by breaking down old beliefs that everyone needs a degree from a prominent university or stint at a big-brand consulting firm, it increases opportunities for more diverse candidates.
“Anti-Fragile” Personalities in High Demand
Tom Haak, Director, HR Trend Institute
Personality has become a more important element in selection. Learning agility for example is a personality trait that organisations like people to have. During the COVID-19 crisis there was a lot of talk about resilience: how can organisations and the people bounce back? Anti-fragility (as opposed to fragility) is a stronger concept: how can people bounce back on a higher level? The concept needs more scientific basis and reliable tests will have to be developed, but clearly 'anti-fragile' personalities will be in high demand.
Remote Work, Candidate Experience & Virtual Recruitment
Dorothy Dalton, CEO, 3Plus International
Remote and hybrid working is here to stay. The downside is many managers are still not fully trained in running virtual teams, so part of their hiring strategies will be identifying candidates who have the capacity to adapt and work successfully as part of a remote team.
The candidate experience should become a major focus too, as candidates talk openly about negative experiences, poor or no communication and drawn-out processes with no feedback, even those who made it to the final stage of a process.
With many countries still on some sort of lockdown or remote working, most elements of the talent acquisition process will continue virtually. Zoom interviewing will be the norm and recruiters will see a move towards automated interviews.
Emphasizing on Behavioural Skills & Putting the H Back in Human
Virginie Stevens, Founding Partner Pétillances, Red Cross Care Manager
2021 will see the strengthening of two major trends that had until then been considered contradictory: the decentralization of work reinforced by the COVID tsunami and the emphasis on behavioural skills promoting the psychosocial balance of employees. In other words, companies will have no other choice but to put human, respectful and balanced leadership at the centre of their strategic approach, which will prove to be key to supporting the remote work of employees called upon for more autonomy and reporting.
Artificial Intelligence and Automation
Nicolas Speeckaert, Founder & Managing Partner at skeeled
Companies have at their disposal immense amounts of data to make better hiring decisions based on evidence rather than gut feeling out of recruitment. AI is so powerful that the principle of searching within databases will be long gone and, building talent pools more relevant than ever. AI will be doing in seconds what humans take days or even weeks to do. AI can adapt the candidate journey according to the information candidates are providing and make sure the experience for the candidate is exceptional during the entire process.
Talent Relationship Management
Nicolas Speeckaert, Founder & Managing Partner at skeeled
Companies need to focus on building a true competitive advantage for attracting and hiring the best talent. For this, it is necessary to optimise two very important dimensions of the recruitment process: the candidate's experience and the selection process. Today, both these aspects can be enhanced by technology.
Top talent will not stay on the jobs market more than a few days, which means companies will need to speed up the application process to secure top performing candidates while, at the same time, provide them with an outstanding recruitment experience.
For more information on skeeled visit www.skeeled.com