What if tomorrow's technological advancements allowed you to change the color of your car in seconds with an application? And what if in the future you could find a new career challenge just as quickly as a new color for your car? Does this sound totally unreal? Maybe not since there is much to indicate that we are heading in that direction.
The digital era continues to revolutionize the employment industry (as well as the automotive industry). With human resources, the transformation is particularly noticeable in the areas of attracting and retaining expert talent. To remain competitive, companies have no choice but to follow suit and do their best to create enticing environments for existing or desired employees.
A new revolution where it is candidates that take the lead
Aging of the population and the emergence of a more educated workforce with access to more information is transforming the world of talent acquisition. In some sectors, qualified candidates are becoming scarce and requirements are more demanding.
Previously, only job seekers had to demonstrate tenacity, professionalism and know-how to find a job. Nowadays, the role of attracting talent also falls to the hands of the employer. Job seekers can rejoice because this reversal of positions of strength in fact improves their working conditions and career prospects.
The Challenges For Employers
Getting noticed
With the gradual adoption of employer branding strategies, companies are trying to attract the interest and attention of candidates who can fill their openings. They use a variety of marketing strategies and tools to attract those they would covet: content marketing, automated marketing, relationship marketing, professional networks, social media, notifications, career sections, videos, testimonials and more.
Still a lot of investments are dedicated to postings that target active and semi-active job seekers. However, once prime candidates in the pool of active seekers have been exhausted, it is expected that a growing number of recruitment initiatives will inevitably move to targeting passive candidates.
Managing your reputation
Many employers are creating inviting corporate descriptions on job boards. This represents an undeniable demonstration of the organizations' need to become well known, respected and/or to distinguish themselves in the eyes of job seekers. Furthermore, companies must protect their reputation as employers and encourage retention of their recruits.
In recent years job seekers have started to use Glassdoorto evaluate, improve or tarnish the reputation of their employers. In the future, this practice may very well intensify and extend to internal divisions and teams as many professionals will want to evaluate the micro-climate of the various components of large organizations.
Creating exciting challenges
We are already seeing shortages of experts in some sectors which makes it necessary to change traditional employment schemes. The first goal for employers is to identify as quickly as possible the right person to fill a specific role. Increasingly companies will have to hire according to needs for specific projects, objectives and challenges, rather than basing decisions on education and experience alone. Candidates will be able to complete their mission and move on rather than remain "pigeon-holed."
To adjust to this new reality, employment platforms will be transformed into "matchmakers" in order to provide employers and job seekers with an adequate exchange hub. Isn't it, after all, the direction in which LinkedIn has been evolving since it was created?
Getting recruited by job seekers
We live in a world where it is increasingly the candidates who choose their employers. The evidence is seen in job notifications that candidates receive from LinkedIn and other specialized career sites that propose opportunities where employers are seeking someone with their profile. Everything indicates that with big data and the many indexing tools available, matching of talent and openings will continue to improve in concert with increased involvement of job seekers.
The current trends show that job seekers will take a proactive role in identifying and refining their criteria for their "next job," in more explicit detail than ever before; identifying professional preferences and, with just one click, they will get a list of available positions matching their criteria. For example we will have job seekers who will specify their custom selections which may include their preferred work schedule (ex. Morning, afternoon, evening, night), type of employment (temporary, full time, part time), desired specialties (aerospace engineering, structural analysis) and so on.
In many ways, this revolution in the world of employment has already begun. As outlined, you can already see leading trends and indicators in the universe of the attraction and retention of talent. In addition, several innovative tools are being introduced to optimize the matching of job seekers and employers. What remains in my opinion the greatest opportunities for progress of all (brought by the advent of the digital era), is the big leap made by candidates into the grounds once dominated by employers: the freedom to choose. Nevertheless, progress is never complete, and before changing car colors or careers in seconds, with mobile in hand, we will have to wait a little ...
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