This Week, In Recruiting - Issue 93

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Open Kitchen: What Happened In Recruiting 2022, Pt3

The last few issues of Open Kitchen have been devoted to covering the top 20 themes in recruitment in 2022. Parts 1 and Parts 2 have been covered in TWIR immediately prior to this issue, and this is Part 3, is where I'm going to close it off by covering 13-20.

To recap, these are the 20 trends in our recruitment which I picked out from the topics which seemed to repeatedly occur in our industry conversations.

Lets start, by going straight into point 13.

13. Accelerating Shift to Skills based hiring

There was no single moment in 2022, but there was certain sense of accelerating beyond the paradigm with more employers disavowing the credentialism associated with University degrees, dropping the requirement, launching apprenticeship schemes and hiring early career candidates who previously would've been screened out at first pass. The arguments were all couched in progressive language - the responsibility to diversify the workforce, the lack of correlation between academic accreditation / future job performance and shift in focus to hire for skills/aptitude/motivations.

However, there probably was no greater driver to the dropping of the degree than practical reality that we couldn't hire enough people. Maintaining a degree requirement meant further reducing the candidate pool, lengthening the hiring process and increasing the cost of empty seat, all of which could be ameliorated if we could better assess for potential and provide requisite training to ramp up to productivity. Throw in the cost of living crisis, the 18 months of remote L&D and there's no way back for degree+graduate scheme paradigm. Good news for assessment tech, a category which is meeting its moment with perfect timing.

14. Rise of Fractional Workers...and maybe, the 'over-employed'

2022 was the first time I saw people call themselves 'Fractional' workers - individuals who perform the same job, part of the time, for multiple employers. Usually these folks were experienced heads of departments, who realised that many employers really didn't need anyone full time in that role but just needed someone to set the strategy, design the plan and just be there on the end of a phone or DM.

Shift to remote has no doubt accelerated this movement, removing the awkwardness of taking a call from second employer whilst on premise at the first, and as experienced workers become less interested in FTE, we can anticipate this trend continuing to grow - look out for LinkedIn or some other tech platform to being creating ways in which your 'fractionality' might be advertised and matched to employers who also prefer not to hire anyone full time for particular roles.

The exciting and lucrative future of working for multiple employers has led some - perhaps many - to simply take on multiple jobs and not declare them to the other. Being 'overemployed' is another manifestation of remote working, drawing multiple salaries from multiple full time jobs and just blagging your way through it. Several recruiters I know have done this, expect many more to do the same as remote reveals another systemic weakness which the opportunistic will always exploit. NB: Check out r/overemployed on Reddit if you don't believe this is a thing ??

15. Candidate Fraud, especially in Remote Assessment / Hire

Being over employed is of course a form of candidate fraud, which unfortunately is phenomenon which moved from the margins and onto the mainstream in 2022. Lip synching candidates, answers being fed in via earpiece, professional interviewees who secure the offer only for another person to 'turn up' at the remote job, ...2022 saw a pre-Cambrian explosion of creativity from candidates trying to get the job. Lets not forget that the candidate shortage had maxed up the rewards and so increased the incentive, whilst remote work increased the surface area of vulnerability to attack.

Some incredible individual stories were covered in Recruiting Brainfood this year, many of whom uncovered by fraud victims or those unwittingly brought into it by identity theft or similar. How to spot, how to mitigate? These are going to be important questions for businesses in the remote first world, and it may well fall upon us recruiters to find the solution - work to do for 2023.

16. Long Covid, Labour Market Paradox & Candidate Shortage

2022 was the year when economists achieved some sort of consensus that a significant component of the labour market paradox could be explained by long term debilitation brought about by Covid-19. We puzzled over the candidate shortage throughout 2021 - where were the missing millions of workers who had been laid off in 2020 and should be actively applying for jobs? Turns out many of them might be too ill to come back to the work they had done before - 400,000 in the UK, maybe as many as 4 million in the US - extraordinary figures which provides new input into our analysis as to 'who got Covid right' (answer: nobody).

It remains to be seen what can be done to support those no longer able to do the work they did before; surely the shift to remote must become persistent and expanded, and yet as we've seen in Pt1 of this extended essay, bosses seem to be using this moment of economic crisis to revert to the 2019 era. Opportunity beckons for those employers who can find a way to re-engage this workforce - lets see who takes this opportunity in 2023

17. Generative AI comes to Recruiting

It's fair to say that I haven't been as excited about an application of technology as since I first held a mobile phone in my hand. Generative AI or GAI has been the breakthrough technology category of 2022, busting through into mainstream consciousness mainly through the efforts of 3rd part entrepreneur / developers who built services which tapped into our need for creative expression.

There will always be naysayers, but I find their critique to be founded more on concern for disintermediation rather than sober analysis of the potential of these tools. Having tried a few of these, I am fully onboard the GAI train and I believe that the next generation of elite recruiters will be those who have mastered some of the tools listed above, and can consequently be able to deliver the output of a small department rather than of a single individual. For folks who want to know more, I'm running a Brainfood Live on 20th Jan next year to discuss how ChatGPT and other GAI tools can be used for Recruiting - make sure you register for it here.

18. Recruiters finally figuring out TikTok...Just Before it Gets Banned?

If it wasn't for ChatGPT stealing all the headlines with their late season announcement onto the scene, we would probably be talking about TikTok as the continuing phenomenon, setting trends, creating culture, connecting people into new ways of communication. I've been waiting for recruiters to get good at this, and I'm still waiting by and large, but a few have emerged which seemed to have developed an style, built an audience and I suspect make some hires doing it. Another one where we'll be doing an early Brainfood Live on next year, so if you want to learn how-to on TikTok, register here

Yes, Joel Lalgee is returning as one of the guests on the show - for my money, one of the top 'recruiter creators' around at the moment. Won't be everyone's cup of tea but you know what? I think that is exactly the thing which builds audience. Make sure you tune in.

19. Creator Economy Continues to Rise, especially Substack

So the big news from Brainfood this year is the forced moved to Substack of the Sunday Recruiting Brainfood email newsletter. I had been on Revue since 2016 but Elon Musk's chaotic reign at Twitter made me realise that Revue, which Twitter acquired in Jan 2021 was unlikely to survive. I have to say, its been a great move so far and Substack has been one of the channel - maybe the main channel - which has enabled professional workers to start on the creator journey.

We need to be aware that power law applies on Substack as it does everywhere else - a very small percentage of publishers will earn the vast percentage of platform earnings but it's not inconceivable that one of them could be you or that you may end up in a couple tiers below and still accrue a reasonable supplementary income, or like me, use it as an audience builder which brings it's own audience. Podcast options, video coming soon no doubt...I'm bullish on this platform, I think it's already overtaken Patreon and will end up playing a significant part of the future media ecosystem, fragmented by tribal identity and localised data compliance. Subscribe to mine here, get on it yourself if you have something to say.

20. Recruiters Were in Demand, for the First time, for a Short time ??

What a glorious moment it was! Do you remember it? For a brief moment between Q2 of 2021 and Q1 2022, we recruiters suddenly found that we were the hottest properties in the jobs market ourselves. LinkedIn even did a graphic on it and Brainfood Jobs was launched in order to try and help. I remember getting involved in all sorts of initiatives to 'make more recruiters' because the demand was such there wasn't enough recruiters to actually go around.

For 6 months - 9 months, maybe - we recruiters felt like how engineers typically feel - wanted, job secure, looking only onwards and upwards for big compensation upgrades and permanent working condition flexibility. It was never going to last but I think we all had reason to believe it might have lasted longer than it did. However, we rediscover the truth that the decisions of the few, impact the lives of the many, and our ability to influence events of global or even national magnitude is limited, to say the least. It was good whilst it lasted and I hope that some of us at least got something during that time ??

End Notes

Going to end this one early folks, as I don't expect any of you to reading about community news on the day after Christmas Day. I hope everybody has had the opportunity to decompress, get away from the daily demands of work and find comfort in the presence of friends and family. I know that also it is not always the easiest season for many, so for those of us who find these holidays challenging, a shout out to you - you know at least you have community with us here!

Happy Holidays everyone. Thank you for your all your amazing support. My very best wishes to us all for a safe, secure, healthy and prosperous year in 2023

Cheers!

Hung

Hung Lee is the curator of?Recruiting Brainfood, and now This Week In Recruiting. Subscribe to both if you are into recruiting or HR or just interested in world of work.