The New Year is quickly approaching – what hiring trends are on the horizon for 2021? We may not have a crystal ball, but we can analyze the data so you can plan ahead for your recruitment strategies in the year ahead.
Remote Work is Here to Stay
With COVID-19 hitting in 2020, there was a massive shift to remote work. Since the pandemic, over 48% of employees work from home at least part of the time, according to a poll from Gartner. Plan for employees to continue to work remotely whenever possible, and if they’re in the office, make plans for safe working conditions. The health and wellness of your employees is your top priority.
A surge in remote workers results in a shift in the way that HR functions. Interviews, onboarding, evaluations, and reviews must all be adjusted to take place virtually. Misunderstands may happen more frequently in a remote environment, and employees can easily feel over-managed or under-managed. Take steps for yourself and your employees to minimize remote work burnout.
Employer Branding and Company Culture are Crucial
To attract the top talent in 2021, you need to solidify your employer branding and your company culture. Your brand includes your reputation in the marketplace and how popular you are in the market. Beyond those two factors, your brand and company culture encompass many intangible elements, such as how you treat your employees and if you act with integrity.
Employees want an employer that values and respects them. Take the time to work with upper management to hone your company culture and truly define your company values and mission statement. Make it easy for potential candidates to understand where you stand as a company. When you’re looking for talent, your company is a brand – and you need to manage that brand effectively. Know where you stand as a company on important matters, especially on core concepts like diversity, equity, and inclusion. Creating a strong employer brand and a clear company culture will help you stand out as an employer and make you desirable to the top talent.
Budget Cuts, Hiring Pauses, and Recruitment Delays
The pandemic’s uncertainty has left many businesses tightening their belts, resulting in budget cuts, hiring pauses, and recruitment delays in 2020. With the pandemic remaining unresolved in 2021, we can look forward to the same unsettling scenarios. Luckily, Human Resources minds are incredibly resilient – you can pivot and work with delays and budget cuts when necessary.
When it comes to recruiting and hiring the best talent, you’ll have to work smarter in 2021. Use hiring reports, like our PIC Report, that help you go beyond the resume and get to know a candidate so you can determine quickly and efficiently if they’re the right fit for your company. Take stock of your current workforce and see if you’re utilizing them to the best of their abilities as well. Have your current employees take our assessment, review their PIC Reports, or view your team in our Team Room to get a broad overview of how diverse the strengths are. You’ll gain valuable insights into how you can move team members around and learn the best ways to communicate, assign tasks, and conduct reviews.
Recruiting Goes Social – and Turns to AI
As anyone with a LinkedIn account knows, social recruiting is as popular as ever – and this will continue to grow in 2021. You’ll continue to see recruiters utilize social networks to source quality candidates in the upcoming year. This goes beyond just sourcing candidates but also includes fact-checking potential employees as well.
AI is already an important part of the hiring process, and businesses will rely on it even more in 2021. From chatbots to ATS, artificial intelligence can touch every step of the way. While we tend to rely on computers and AI during the hiring process, let’s not forget that there are actual humans on the other end of this. Keep the human in human resources, and treat your candidates (and employees) like the humans that they are.
Hiring for Skills and Potential, Not Just Education and Experience
In 2020, we began to see a shift from hiring simply based on education and experience to hiring based on skills and potential. This shift was evident at a federal level, with Executive orders that shifted the focus to merit-based hiring from degree-based hiring in the federal hiring process. We’ll continue to see this happen across businesses at all levels, not for those working for the government. SHRM notes that people tend to pick up skills quickly and adapt to a new environment rapidly, even without experience or degrees to back it up. How can you determine if a candidate has the skills and potential necessary for your job opening? Have them take our assessment and use the PIC Report as part of the hiring process. You’ll gain insights into the skills that you can’t tell from their experience and degree-filled resume. The PIC Report includes benchmarks that give you guidance into how skilled a candidate is in various areas and the potential that lies within that candidate. Download a sample PIC Report here to see how it can benefit you during the hiring process.
