Future of Recruitment: What Does Tomorrow’s Recruiter Look Like?

What does tomorrow’s Recruiter look like?

The Recruitment Network put this question to us. It didn’t take long for the Barclay Jones team to answer this question! We’re passionate about the recruitment industry and firm believers that recruiters need to be hands-on when it comes to technologyand digital marketing. Recruitment marketing is about technology and process… not just content and tweeting.

There’s a lot of chat about AI (artificial intelligence) taking over recruitment– but relationship building and nurturing are two reasons recruitment consultants can stop worrying about “robots taking over their job” or the entire hiring process becoming one long automation!

The Barclay Jones team has come up with some key skills and traits which recruiters need to adopt and adapt to, to be a great recruiter in 2020.

Recruiters Need to Become Trusted Advisors

• Recruitment consultants are going to need to get back to consulting… not just placing. For example, advising clients on how best to position their brand in order to attract talent – AKA protect their sales pipeline. They’ll consult talent, not simply interview it!
• Recruiters need to sell jobs and dreams, rather than posting job specs. Then, spend time understanding which channels are most appropriate to market them on, rather than spraying and praying!
• Recruiters will love and care for their data, finally seeing their CRM as the oracle that can increase efficiency and profitability – using the information within to market their roles and clients effectively.
• Recruiters will treat their LinkedIn groups like face-to-face networking events, improving their personal brands and attracting key talent and client leads.

Recruiters Will Need to Focus on Passion and Teamwork

• Recruiters will work as a TEAM to market their brand, roles, and candidates. Rather than have a dog-eat-dog attitude and operate as individuals, they will share each other’s LinkedIn posts / content, share candidates and clients effectively, help each other with sourcing and writing job adverts. It’s hard enough fighting the competition – so don’t fight each other!
• Recruiters will need to think about long-term relationship building with candidates. Focus will be on “re-placing” candidates and keeping existing talent pools warm with regular candidate contact and marketing.
• Recruiters will need to really enjoy what they do, have a passion for recruitment and demonstrate it through their face to face and online activity. If they don’t seem to buy-in to recruitment as a critical service, it’ll be difficult to sell it as a critical service to their clients and talent.

Recruiters Will Need to Get Psychological, Sticky and Get Tough!

• Recruiters will need to be better psychologists and help the client to understand how the introduction of a new personality will affect the current team. There is not only a need to focus on skills a candidate brings, but also how driven they are, how will they interact socially, their communication style, how they work with other team members and so on… This will help managers to make better choices regarding team effectiveness, harmony and ultimately, output.
• Recruiters will need to really get to grips with what they do – and market it! You get the best deals for your clients and candidates – but speak little of your advocacy. You worry about candidates going straight to your clients if you mention their names in adverts, but spend little time building loyalty. Recruiters will need to build LOYAL talent pools and LOYAL clients to be a 2020 recruiter. It’s time to get sticky!
• Recruiters will need to get tougher with their clients. Having a 24 or 48 hour turnaround for delivery of relevant CVs breeds a rushed approach to recruitment. Working with trusted partners who provide value is far more valuable to a client, than working with tens of recruiters who focus on skillset, location and salary.

What Does The Recruitment Network Think?

We loved this question! The future is fascinating, potentially ominous, certainly exciting though full of uncertainty, but more often than not if we look at trends we can predict what the future may hold – don’t hold us to all our predictions and advice, but much of what we talk about here is just as relevant today as it will be tomorrow. A great recruiter will take the insights we list here and will work on them diligently so when 2020 comes around they’ll be ready!

Truffle Hunters

Recruiters of the future need to be ‘Truffle Hunters’, finding the most talented individuals in corners of the web that are off the beaten track. Modern recruiters will know their subject matter intimately and be able to find the perfect candidate in those often hidden places where they hang out. Think finding developers on Stack overflow, marketers on Inbound, experts in Reddit Subreddits or question boards like Quora.

Social media shows no sign of slowing down with an estimated 2.95 billion users of social predicted for 2020, a 440 million increase in 3 years! It’s imperative the recruiter embraces all manner of social platforms that relate to their particular field, because there will be talent and candidates proactive in these forums that are ripe to be engaged with.

Put aside time daily to keeping up to top on the latest news and happenings in the industry in which you’ll be placing candidates. Every Industry has blogs and forums where there is an active community right now, which will see further growth by 2020. My best advice would be find to these communities, jump straight in, comment, collaborate, engage and establish yourself as an active member of the community. So when you find that truffle you’ll hold some status and clout.

Traditional Sales People

Sales and recruiting go hand in hand and this will never change. Although the rise of technology is forever changing the face of some recruitment methods, good old fashioned sales know-how will not be replaced with technology.

A good recruiter will have mastered the art of persuasion. The consultant will still need to be able to convince their candidates to take the role, able to convince the hiring manager to change their offer to attract the best talent. The future-proof recruiter will need to be able to effectively convince cold talent to apply for lucrative new positions. 2020 will see passive prospects being flooded with recruiter requests, so a special type of sales-minded recruiter will need to use all their acumen to peak their interest.

Smart social sellers

Social Selling, the art of using social media and the internet to find and close potential leads and candidates, is continually rising in 2017 – 81% of teams were using Social Selling. When the average person spends about 30% of their time on social media you’d be crazy to miss engaging with a potential client or candidate by missing out on selling through social

Social media provides a platform where you firstly get in touch with a veritable wealth of people on a platform that promotes conversation. Secondly it allows you to find out information, interests and motivations of your potential leads. Which you can then in turn use this information to engage and persuade.

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool that can allow a 20-year-old to have a discussion with a head of industry with 30+ years’ experience! Another form of communication that can allow smart sellers to turn an extremely cold lead into a bubbling hot one! We see social selling being an essential skill in the future of recruitment.

Account Developers

A big part of a recruiter’s role is account management / penetration. A good consultant is able to keep their clients happy and engaged and therefore willing to stay longer with them and spend more. This takes a great deal of regular caretaking and personal touches!

A good account manager keeps helps set and efficiently manage their clients’ expectations. You’ll need to know your clients well and understand their business inside out, both from what is going on today but as importantly what is happening in their businesses / markets tomorrow.

With an increase in 13.7% of Recruitment companies being set up compared to 2015, you can be sure you’ll be facing off against a lot more competition in 2020, who’ll be more than happy to capitalise on a slip-up you make with any existing relationships you have!

Consultants and Advisors

The modern day Recruiter will work hand in hand with their clients to help them improve their own business to attract talent. Talent shortages are a huge challenge that businesses need to overcome in the future, and recruiters need to be knowledgeable in the art of selling and marketing their clients’ workplaces, benefits packages and culture.

This is about providing diligent research, questioning perceptions and advising both client and candidate – in essence living up to our job titles of cons recruitment consultant.

The 2020 Recruiter will be therefore be an mentor to a company. Able to talk to the business manager or the CEO and challenge their business, suggesting how to change / evolve their culture, adjust their remuneration offerings and packages or even just getting them to adjust their ‘work for us page’ to make them more attractive.

Industry Authorities

As we’ve touched on before, the market is growing and competition is fierce. Consultants can’t risk sending the wrong candidates to the client for fear of losing their business. This means the consultant needs to be an authority in their field to be a future proof recruiter.

Being an authority means being on top of what is happening every day in your market, the changes that are going on, what is around the corner for our clients.

… and if a recruiter is an authority, and they have an opinion, then they should use social to tell their client and candidate universes that they do, which in turn builds trust in them as someone who can supply within that market.

Customer Experience Wizards

Customer Experience (CX) is the next battlefield. This is something that only the best are doing right, but are seeing tremendous results from their efforts. In essence this is all about keeping a customer, getting them to spend more, being able to negotiate cost, getting recommendations, repeat business and so on. Customer experience done right is the key to more business and profitable growth.

The same goes for the candidate experience. Making the candidates feel special throughout the journey to getting a new job will give enable your consultancy to build a great reputation that the market are talking about and a great reputation means business success!

Multi-Generational Empathisers

2020 will be a market flooded with 5 different generations! So the smart recruiter will be what we call ‘multi-generational empathisers’ able to ascertain the motivations, requirements and needs of all 5 different and very distinct generations.

Empathising at this level, on a more personalised level, will have significant impact on conversion ratios, attraction of candidates, retention of candidates and therefore turnover of placed candidates.

And this all equals… you guessed it, repeat business and a wider network of engaged clients and candidates!

Industry Analysts

Recruitment is and always will be an industry that is full of opportunity, sprinkled with a little bit of luck! The consultants who keep their ears to the ground and seize new opportunities are the ones who strike it lucky.

New, emerging markets are continually popping up year after year and there’s always new job opportunities in every new markets that emerges. Just look at the last couple of years, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cyber Security, Drones are all enjoying significant growth as markets, filled with start-ups looking for talented employees to help see their vision come to fruition (and most likely a ROI returned to their investors for their seed funding).

2020 will be full of new technologies and job opportunities which will lead to opportunity for consultants, not only in tech recruitment markets, but in every market that tech is infiltrating, from retail to commerce, to automotive to health and so on.

Brand Ambassadors

We touched on this before, but this is important – the recruitment consultant of tomorrow needs to be a true brand ambassador for their clients.

A company’s brand is a huge part of their trading value and this won’t change, especially when it is easier and quicker every day to publicise opinions about brands (think Glassdoor, Trip Advisor and so on…). Consumer scepticism is on the rise because of this.

The future recruiter will live and breathe the culture of their clients and be true ambassadors of the clients, a role normally left to the marketing dept.

So, that is our advice for a future-proof recruiter – what about Barclay Jones?

What do you think? What are the top skills recruiters of 2020 will need?

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