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I recently got one of those year-end surveys asking about the significant developments in recruitment in 2012 and trends and predictions for next year.

My inclination was to ignore it; I’ve got enough to do keeping track of today, let alone trying to figure out what next year will bring. As for 2012, without the perspective of time, it’s hard to tell tell what will turn out to be significant in the long run. A few developments, though, will undoubtedly make the survey.

Social media for recruitment will be there, as will the drive to mobile. My list includes growing buzz over “big data,” even though it’s nowhere near clear how it will eventually make a difference in hiring and workforce management.

Vendor consolidation also makes my list. So too does the changing composition of the traditional workforce composition. By that I mean specifically the use of temps and contractors as a strategic component of the workforce, coupled with the growing cadre of professionals who, having turned to contract work (consulting, to put it politely) out of necessity are finding it suits them and provides a work/life balance companies mostly just talk about.

However, after thinking about my list, I realized that it’s the mergers and acquisitions that will have the biggest impact and will come to be seen as one of the more significant industry developments since the recession forced all of us to completely rethink and restructure what we do.

Much of what went on in 2012 was evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. And this is certainly true of the consolidation of the talent acquisition and HR management system vendors. It has been going on for some time now, though the setting was on simmer. But then SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors, technically a late 2011 event, turned up the heat. In short order Kenexa and  Taleo got bought up. And later, Bullhorn picked up Sendouts and MaxHire. There were also smaller deals that kept the pot boiling throughout the year.

The significance here isn’t the transactions themselves; it’s what’s behind them and, even more so, what it means for the future. keep reading…

In the movie “The Matrix” there’s a scene where Laurence Fishburne says to Keanu Reeves, “The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work … when you go to church … when you pay your taxes.”

That’s basically the premise of big data, where the potential in recruiting is in getting good candidates to respond. keep reading…

Just weeks after I wrote a piece for ERE.net about talent communities, something happened on the Internet that excited much of the tech blogs and was acknowledged by many traditional press outlets; President Barack Obama held a 30-minute “ask-me-anything” session on the self-proclaimed “front page of the Internet” reddit.com. There is an important take away here for professional recruiters.

First things first.

Closer to the election, a day before in fact, the President took some time to once again drop in on redditors to ask for their votes. Contender Mitt Romney’s reddit.com appearances? Exactly two less than Mr. Obama’s.

The President invested some of his campaign time into a site like reddit because of its demographics.  Google’s Double Click Ad Planner reports that reddit traffic is overwhelmingly dominated by people under the age of 35. In addition to reddit, Team Obama also spent a lot of effort on getting content broadcast on Tumblr, another social site that hosts far more under-thirty-somethings than overs. And while it is not possible to determine specifically whether or not Mr. Obama’s reddit.com investment paid off, election results sure do look like the strategy of going where the youth vote was more than likely paid off.

Not only did the President dominate the youth vote nationally (see the graphic below, click to enlarge), more importantly in critical swing states he actually improved upon his 2008 performance in the youth vote (also see the figure below), something he was unable to do nationally.

The evidence suggests that the President’s investment to meet the key youth demographic where they were digitally clearly paid off.

Now to what it means to you. keep reading…

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Whether you follow politics or not, there are many important lessons that leaders in talent management and HR can learn from the recent presidential election.

Before you dismiss the relevance of this learning opportunity out of hand, spend a few minutes to consider the following lessons from the election that may be valuable to leaders in HR and talent management.

4 Key Lessons for HR and Talent Management Leaders keep reading…

It’s impossible to find an HR conference, a business magazine, or a recruiting site — especially this one — that isn’t talking about big data.

Just last month here on ERE Matthew Jeffery concluded his remarkable series on the future of recruiting — Recruitment 5.0 — saying “5.0 is all about… Personalization, self-sufficiency, predictability, big data, and back to basics.”

“Big Data,” he writes, “will become the central point of competition, driving productivity growth, innovation — and this applies to recruiting.”

Before big data can, as Kevin Wheeler put it a year ago, “change everything” about recruiting, recruiters will need to have access to it and know how to use it. Considering how few tap the full power of their own ATS, that’s a task on a par with getting PC users to see their first computer as more than just a word processor.

“Even if you have the tool,” says CareerBuilder’s Brent Rasmussen, “They don’t use it correctly; they don’t use it efficiently.”

Rasmussen wasn’t talking about anyone or group in particular; he was talking about the challenge of introducing a whole new way of dealing with information. In September, CareerBuilder bought employment and labor data and analytics firm EMSI (Economic Modeling Specialists International). It’s Rasmussen who has responsibility for integrating the EMSI data with CareerBuilder’s products, principally its Supply and Demand Portal. keep reading…