It’s important for you, hiring companies, to up your game now to find the best talent for your future! Why? Because, although most of today’s media attention is spent on the employment crisis for the job seekers, there are also critical challenges for hiring companies today:
- Sourcing and attracting the right talent for the future.
- Selecting the best hire from so many applicants.
- Making your company attractive to three generations of talent seeking employment today.
If you’re not worried about these challenges, you should be. And if you are not re-inventing the way you go to market or position your company as a great employer, you will certainly miss out. Here are the biggest changes in today’s hiring landscape:
Change #1: How to make your company visible in a crowded and fragmented market. We’ve moved from the newspaper era in the 80’s and 90’s into today’s web era. Start preparing for tomorrow’s mobile and social media era right now.
Change #2: Turnover has accelerated significantly. As more employees become comfortable shifting away from seeking security toward more exciting job opportunities, turnover rates will increase by over 25 percent. Increased turnover will put an added strain on an already-stretched recruiting system. The bad news? Your best performers will be the first to move.
Naturally, turnover varies by industry; retail and IT have the highest turnover while manufacturing has the lowest.
Change #3: Speed. In the past, you could take your time and still land top candidates. Today, firms will have no choice but to revisit “speed of hire” approaches and tools in order to land candidates that are in high demand.
Now that you’re familiar with hiring changes going on around you, what are the hot trends?
Hot Trend #1: With three generations of talent in the workplace today and seeking employment, companies need to examine their career website pages and to differentiate their messages for each generation. Because each age group has very different needs, values, and attitudes, understanding generational differences can help companies make better hires and increase retention. Here’s my challenge to you: Have you looked at your own career website lately? Who is designing it and writing the copy? Who are they speaking to?
Hot Trend #2: By 2020 more than half of the workforce will be Millennials (born between the early 80s and the early 2000s, also called Generation Y) and understanding how to attract, recruit, and retain them will be key to your company's success. Millennials were born into technology, so you need to be found and positively branded where they are looking. Hook them with your job descriptions and your social media presence. Mobile device access, video interviewing, and instant responses to their application are mandates.
By the way, have you read your job descriptions lately? Would you apply to them?
Hot trend #3: Mobile recruiting. One of the main characteristics of the emerging talent pool is that they are not only technology-savvy, but fluent in the use of multiple mobile devices. Tablets, phones, laptops are ubiquitous and candidates expect their experiences to be good – and consistent – on every device they use. For hiring companies of all sizes, mobile recruiting presents a unique set of challenges and opens a new set of opportunities to attract and hire future leaders.
There are 3 things companies should be doing now to catch up with the mobile recruiting trend:
- Create a mobile-optimized career site. Nothing frustrates smartphone users more than a website built for the desktop that doesn’t work well on mobile.
- Utilize social media channels like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, as well as job boards to drive traffic to a mobile careers page.
- Streamline and “mobilize” the job application. The application should take no more than 5 minutes to complete on mobile.
What are you going to do differently right now to become relevant and attractive to the candidate pool and to build the right team for your future?
Dana Manciagli is a career expert, speaker, and private coach. She has spent more than 30 years as a Fortune 500 sales and marketing executive, now retired after over a decade’s tenure at Microsoft. Dana is the author of the book, Cut the Crap, Get a Job! and a prolific blogger. A recognized career, networking, and business thought leader, she is a sought-after speaker and a regular contributor to print and online publications, including her own weekly “Career Mojo” column in all of the Business Journals nationwide.