I read years ago that the only accurate thing about predictions in the computer industry is that they will be wrong. So it is with some trepidation that I provide you with the following Recruitment Predictions for 2006:
1)Corporations will rely increasingly on in-house, professional corporate recruiters to fill the majority of their positions.
2)Monster will continue to dominate the classic job board market.
3)Web search for candidates will continue to be the domain of specialist recruiters working for leading technology companies. Most companies will ignore this resource.
4)Instant messaging will continue to grow in use, especially for college recruitment and entry level positions.
5)Corporate blogs will have only moderate acceptance by HR leadership but will be a useful tool for leading recruiters.
6)Applicant tracking systems will look much the same as they do now. Only incremental advances are anticipated.
7)Newspaper advertising for open positions will continue to decline.
8)Recruitment wikis will get started. HR leadership won’t know what a wiki is.
9)C-level folks will increase their demand for meaningful metrics from HR leadership. Recruiter activity and results will be increasingly measured. The best recruiters already measure their performance and won’t notice much difference.
10)The demand for qualified talent will continue to grow and quality recruitment industry suppliers will prosper.
It should be interesting to see what this year actually brings…
Statistics
posted 2/27/2006 at 7:41 a.m. PT by Jason Gorham
Simon, it was funny you wrote this as I was going to but never got around to it. It really amuses me about how many statisitcs companies are given on how monster, careerbuilder and hotjobs fail to produce hires and quality hires. Here is three reasons why employers should be using us, instead of the other job boards.
· 70 to 80% of Web sessions begin at a search engine. A high search engine listing within the top 30 results is one of the most effective ways to attract a target audience to a site.
· Search is the second most popular Internet activity after email with an estimated 600 million searches performed each day among English speaking internet users alone.
· Search sites reach over 130 million Americans a month, which is approximately 85% of all internet traffic.
Recruitment Predictions for 2006
posted 2/27/2006 at 7:48 a.m. PT by Todd Noebel
Simon,
I find that I agree with the trends you have outlined.
I think we are moving away from the "War" for talent and all of the attendant ugly combative results, and moving into more of a "Chess Match" - more thoughtful, more long-term, thinking of future consequence, more concern with eliminating collateral damage, etc. A whole other blog tobe sure.
I also agree that HR metrics are becoming more important. And we better be sure that we are the ones defiing the meaningful metrics, and not someone else. If we can set the standards, then we have a much better ability to reflect the realities of what we do and how well (or poorly) it gets done.
Corporate blogs will be valuable when they are candid and engaging rather then spin control centers. Especially sense the savvy reader knows when the bull is lifting its tail if you take my meaning.
Most importantly, I do see companies coming to rely more and more on well trained, highly professional, internal corporate recruiting teams. Which means that companies will also begin to pay attention to not only who they hire into these roles, but how they attend to their care and feeding.
I like your predictions. I suspect these will stand the test of the next 12 months. It will be fun to revisit and assess them.
Todd Noebel
Enjoyed your post - agree especially on wikis!
posted 3/6/2006 at 8:33 a.m. PT by Julian Seery Gude
First: congrats on winning post of the week from recruiting.com! I enjoyed reading your predictions and I appreciate you having the guts to put yourself out there by stating your beliefs for the coming twelve months.
Since you mentioned wikis I thought you might want to read my post on using wikis for employer branding that I put together for our blog. Here's the link to our story: http://www.exceler8ion.com/2006/01/22/employer-brand-triple-threat-wikis-blogs-and-employee-word-of-mouth/
Corporate Recruiting
posted 3/7/2006 at 9:24 a.m. PT by Robert Merrill
I do think that many companies will continue to hire internal recruiters (you should, if you're large enough) However, as the talent market shrinks, I believe that external recruiters (like me) hold a distinct advantage. Top talent--especially technical ones--hate the dog-and-pony show of applying, submitting resumes, reference checking, blah, blah...
My top consultants use me almost exclusively because they did that with me once, and now I do all the rest.
As the market tightens for good talent, I think 3rd party recruiters become more valuable and, to be blunt, companies that don't (won't) leverage the talent pools that external recruiters are developing are missing a large sector of the market!
Response to various comments…
posted 3/11/2006 at 9:14 p.m. PT by Simon Meth
Thank you all for your comments. Much appreciated!
Jason, I wonder what percentage of Web search job seekers go direct to the job boards as opposed to the meta job board sites like http://www.indeed.com/ and http://careermetasearch.com/? I suspect right now that that the majority of searchers go direct. Also a high percentage use job board search agents so the task of keeping up with new posts is made easier. Also, I wonder what percentage of all posts are on http://www.monster.com/ and http:///www.careerbuilder.com/? I suspect it’s a high percentage. I also suspect that Careerbuilder is gaining ground on Monster. They certainly have enjoyed a surge in traffic following the Super Bowl and rolling out http://www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/.
Todd, the war for talent has been the subject of endless debate. Hey, it made a nice diversion from overused sports metaphors. I like your “Chess Match” idea. Let’s all exercise our gray matter and make smarter hires. Everyone benefits from that…
Julian, thank you for the congrats! This week I talked with the VP IS where I’m consulting currently, only to find that this client will have corporate blogs and wikis in the next week or so. The intention is for internal use. I figure, that since internal referrals continue to be the #1 source of hires, that both will be useful tools to enhance the referral program. The real challenge will be to expand blog and wiki reach outside the corporation…
Robert, no slight on external recruiters of all types (contingent, retained, agency, independent, consultant, body shop, etc.) was intended. I maintain that the majority of corporate hiring will be done without the use of external recruiters. I wonder what percentage of all corporate hires includes a fee or markup paid to some external agency. I guess, in the U.S., that the answer is less than 10% and probably much less than that. Any ideas?
Resume Wiki
posted 3/22/2006 at 4:46 p.m. PT by Paul Pickthorne
I was glad to see Wiki's in the list. I just created www.resuwiki.com which is a free wiki based resume database. I'd be interested in hearing thoughts from anyone on the concept.
Thanks, Paul.
RE: Resume Wiki...
posted 3/25/2006 at 10:11 a.m. PT by Simon Meth
Hi Paul,
Cool idea! I see that you're just getting started since nearly all of the resumes were loaded by you. I like your "Resume of the Month". It's great to see what's possible. Also neat to see pbwiki.com. It never ceases to amaze me what you can get for free on the Web.
Good wishes for your venture.
Simon
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