Emerging Recruitment Trends in 2021

For most of us, 2020 has been the most depressing year because of Covid-19. Everyone was filled with worries and uncertainties about how our life will turn out once the calamity ceases. Various companies had to come up with new strategies to avoid getting closed down.

As the year was coming to an end and the reopening of the economy lifted the hopes for the Employers.

However, it turned out to be a disappointment as active candidates were not keen on taking new roles and a large number of passive employees were still under their payroll because of these economic uncertainties.  

 As of now, as the peril passed away, employers are back on the field hiring employees. They came up with recruiting trends to cooperate with the situation.

Here, it is a must to include the word of the work-from-home initiative. During the ongoing time of peril, most of the companies have adopted this concept to stay afloat. At first, it was just a measure of survival, but as time passed, it became favorable for many people.

The work-life balance concept was preferable for many as it also helped the employee to work more productively than before. 

 Another productive benefit of the work from the home initiative was that it enabled employers to recruit skills from overseas. Recruiting smarter people from foreign countries helped to accumulate more profits resulting in the enormous growth of the business or company.

According to a survey of Harvard business school, it has been exposed that 81% of professional employees prefer to work from home over traditional office work. 

Recruitment trends that have been profitable in the past few years won’t be applicable now because of the still prevailing uncertainty of the disease amongst people. Nowadays, most of the recruitment trends revolve around AI and social media. 

Few Emerging Recruitment Trends in a Glimpse

  • PEO/ Professional Employer Organization

 PEO is an organization that mainly handles and manages a certain company’s employee-related responsibilities and liabilities. This allows a certain employer to Subcontract their human resource functions.

For example, employee benefits, payroll administration, and employees compensation as well as employees tax. It also helps the employer by recruiting and hiring individuals that are suitable for the employer. To put it in simple words, it functions as a functional HR. 

  In April, over 269,000 jobs were added to the US economy. However, there was a rise in the unemployed rate by 6.1 percent. To come up with this dilemma, Many employers are acquiring the service of PEO to recruit more potential employees. 

  • Increased Usage of Online Communication Tools

 Due to Covid-19, all the people had to stay indoors to avoid the spread of the disease. Which forced companies to mold their recruitment policies. While they are still dependent upon the traditional means such as phone calls and emails. A new idea sprouted amongst employers, Video call. Now, every company depends upon this idea to recruit new employees, and this trend will remain highlighted in the coming times too. There are various benefits of using online communication tools too. Such as, 

1.  Shortened Hiring Time

 While taking the physical interview is both time-consuming and tiresome, online interviews are much easier. Such as easy rescheduling of interviews, and it reduces instances for phone screening.

2.  Gather Qualitative Information

 Engaging in a video call enables the employer to get an insight into the employee’s quality as well as his potential. It helps to add qualitative elements to the pre-selection process.  

  • Using AI For Recruitment

 Many companies take the help of AI in the HR process to reduce manual work. The technology is helping to ease the Workload during recruitment workflow and executing high-volume tasks related to the process—for example, it helps the company to manage recruitment applications.

Application tracking from employer’s databases uses plenty of keywords and other data factors, an AI can easily sort and analyze thousands of applications With minimal error, and it can execute the job in a second while a person takes hours going through those applications. 

  •  Remote Work

 As I have mentioned above, nowadays, the popularity of remote work is growing at an unprecedented rate. Companies that have to acquire this method are continuing this method. But not everyone can work remotely, for that certain expertise is needed for sure.

Nowadays, many companies are looking for employees who work well in a remote environment yielding high productivity without the presence of managers and colleagues.

In remote work, many employees have to do collaborative work with individuals they had never seen before. That may cause some insignificance among normal employees who lack sufficient talent to execute this job. To recruit remote employees, the employer must have a broad knowledge of the process. 

  • Project-Based Contract Hiring

The needs of Freelance contractors has risen significantly after Covid-19, more and more companies are employing a project-based contractor to execute the job efficiently. It isn’t a deniable fact that freelancers have expertise over their job because it depends on their reputation. A freelancer won’t be getting jobs if the quality of his work is deteriorating. 

  •  Candidate Experience

  Candidate Experience is a much-discussed topic on today’s date. Even if all the candidates you are speaking with won’t end up getting the job, they need to be addressed properly and with respect. Doing so will only elevate the company’s reputation in the professional world. It also serves as a way to improve the overall process and qualitative hires. The way a company treats a candidate in the hiring process will reflect on how the company treats its current employees.    

  • Disembowel of Traditional Requirements

 It may sound unbelievable to one, but nowadays, many frontline companies don’t require their candidates to have years of a college degree. Such as Apple, Google, Netflix, and even Elon musk, which only focus solely on the required skills. Which is becoming a specialized recruiting trend. Many prominent companies are heading towards this direction and employing worthy candidates with required skill-sets rather than recruiting bookworms with little skill-sets. 

Conclusion

There are other recruiting trends emerging over time. However, the recruiter must be well aware of the changing market to recruit worthy employees to stay ahead of time.