Recruitment « FEATURE
ith the nature of businesses and organisation structures becoming more complex, and the generational shift bringing in a new dominant generation to the workforce, to remain relevant in changing times, the recruitment landscape also has to continue to change. It is predicted by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics that by this year, Millennials will make up the majority of the workforce. With each generation being slightly different from its predecessors, it is essential to note that recruitment strategies are being tweaked to cater to this generational shift. Karen Tok, CEO of ScienTec Consulting in Asia, says: “To attract Millennials, it is critical to embrace their traits of high energy, techsavviness, outspokenness, impatience for change and growth – and channel them into the right job functions.”
New trends in recruitment Recruiters are embracing the new generation’s tech-savviness. According to LinkedIn’s 2015 edition of the Global Recruiting Trends Report, more of them are turning to social media to promote their talent brand. Dion Groeneweg, Mercer’s region lead for HR transformation and workforce planning and analytics, is of the opinion the biggest disruptor today is, in fact, technology. “The biggest change for organisations is in the way they interact with Millennials. The use of social media is on the rise and there are a lot of companies using LinkedIn to drive their recruitment. Some tech companies are building games to assess people’s capabilities in certain technical areas,” he says. Shai Ganu, Mercer’s market business leader for talent consulting in Asia, agrees, adding that predictive hiring is catching on in companies.
“A trend we’re seeing at the progressive companies is predictive hiring – that is, looking at gamification concepts or social media presence to try and get a sense of whether the person would work out in the organisation. “This also involves correlations and models about potential candidates, what behaviours and competencies they tend to exhibit, and different assessments to predict if they will be successful in your organisation.” Other than these trends, Shalini Bhateja, Schneider Electric’s director of talent management for Asia Pacific and the Middle East, also points out that as organisations become more matrixed, there is an increase in the number of stakeholders in the recruitment process, especially when recruiting for more senior roles. “In that sort of matrixed set-up, I think what has majorly shifted in recruitment is the number of people and decision makers involved in the recruitment process,” she says. “I think the stakeholders who are doing recruitment have gone up because people work with multiple stakeholders and then everybody needs to be consulted before someone is recruited for a mid to senior-level position.”
Challenges in recruitment Witnessing these new trends is interesting, but so are the new challenges that have emerged. According to Glassdoor’s Recruiting Outlook Survey, 48% of hiring decision makers feel that there is a shortage of qualified candidates for open positions. Bhateja agrees that it can be difficult to find someone with the right qualifications. Especially when hiring for senior roles, it is common to over-hire when one is trying to hire for the future and build a pipeline for tomorrow. “In such cases the first challenge is to find the right profile. The second challenge is to convince them to be hired for the future,” she says. Another challenge she points out is the ability to make the right decisions as well as to follow a structured process when hiring.
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