QUESTION: What do you think the 3 new trends of recruiting in 2019 that are impacting our business? – Lisa, FL
ANSWER: The ongoing trends are not anything specific. The main trends you are going to see are a continuing trend, because of market demographics meaning the youngest baby boomer is in their mid-50s and that is the last population spike has worked their way through the workforce of the last 20 years. Generation X, which is in their late 30s to early 50s are comprised of 9 million fewer people than there were baby boomers who are maturing in the workforce and exiting the workforce. This one of the main reasons why we have huge candidate deficits even in mild economy growth that we are experiencing.
Another generational trend we are starting to see is the next huge boom, which is bigger than the baby boomer, is Millennials Generation Y. They are not as mature in the workforce yet. Even though they are in their mid 20s, early 30s, they are slowly moving into higher level positions. The spike in that population is in their mid 20s. It is the early part of their career, that is not the people that are prime targets for your search assignments, so I think that the continuing trend is candidate tightness and the continuing trend is companies think they can solve that by bring recruiting in-house.
On thing you can do to fight that trend of bring things in-house is developing great questions about the challenges companies are having recruiting. If I tell a client here is why using internal recruiting for every type of position is messed up, I create a defensive prospect and actually it is not true because there are some positions they are really good for and it is the positions. By the way, you probably do not want anyway. But if you ask questions about what their talent acquisition process is compared to your talent acquisition process and show how the two can work together in harmony, you can create some great strategic relationships.
There is always going to be the next thing that knocks out recruiters. Fifteen years ago it was Monster and the job boards. Those companies are dying right now, and the next thing is LinkedIn. A passive candidate is a passive candidate and needs to be nurtured and recruited. In past recessions I saw recruiters that relied on job boards to find all their candidates go away because they did not know how to recruit great talent that was seemly happy in at their current company. In a recession sometimes you need to find it, as you know, great talent that is not necessarily looking to make a move.
Another trend in recruiting is I think companies are going to get more flexible. I think you will want to challenge companies that need people in offices to see if their work can be done remotely because the more flexibility a company can provide, the more attractive they are going to be in their opportunities. All things being equal, somebody can work remotely with all the technology we have now in phone systems, internet, etc. Really challenging your client to see if it is absolutely necessary that the next new hire be at the office or at the headquarters. If it is, is it actually critical that they have to be there 5 days a week because I seen an emerging trend with more and more companies allowing more and more people to work off site all or part of the time, so that is another one to dig into.
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