10 Predictions for HR & Recruiting in 2015 - Part 2

Yesterday, I published Part One of my admittedly optimistic predictions for HR and Recruiting in 2015, so without further ado let’s crack on with the second and final part – predictions 6-10.

6. Anyone mentioning the ‘War for Talent’ is replaced by a robot

HR is full of lazy and over-used phrases like “seat at the table”, "process" and arguably “no”, but the one that really gets my goat is “war for talent”. It was first coined by McKinsey all the way back in 1997 when reality TV mercifully didn’t exist and yours truly was just embarking on a new career as a recruiter. When it comes to marketing slogans, analogies with wars – like sex – sells, but surely when it comes to the war for talent, isn’t it time for a new idiom? Let’s make 2015 the year that anyone in or connected to HR will be ridiculed and replaced by a robot for daring to mention this tedious phrase.

7. Someone (anyone?) gives LinkedIn a run for its money

Whilst I’m a paid up member of the LinkedIn fan club, it’s about time someone took them on before hubris or megalomania sets in (some may argue it already has). It doesn’t matter really if it is Facebook at Work (see Wired article), Indeed (see this ere.net article) or Google for Work or even better all of them. It will be interesting to see how LinkedIn react once someone starts to muscle in on their patch – one suspects that the cycle of spiraling costs may turn full cycle. So come on Zuckerberg, get on with it.

8. Candidate experience gets taken more seriously

With both scarcity and demand rising, top candidates have a multitude of options, so candidate experience is going to become increasingly important. These candidates aren’t going to spend time trying to decipher information on your organisation and how to apply. If it took 30 minutes to buy the average item on Amazon, how long do you think the company would survive? Not long. So, why do so many organisations put their candidates through purgatory by making them complete a ridiculously long application through an ATS? Indeed, as this excellent post by David Smooke on the Smart Recruiters blog suggests many organisations ATS have effectively become a HPS – a Hiring Prevention System. Is a passive candidate having been nurtured to the virtues of your organisation more likely to apply via an elongated ATS process or with one click from their LinkedIn profile? It’s not rocket science. Nor is ensuring your site is fully optimised for mobile. People do most of their web browsing, research, and job-hunting on their phone or tablet - LinkedIn doesn’t design its new features for mobile first to try and be clever. Organisations that fail to recognise this and provide a poor candidate experience will miss out on some great hires - and business as they decide to shop elsewhere.

9. ...so does employer brand.

Most organisations get how important their consumer brand is but neglect to give equal focus to their employer brand. Of course they are equally important especially when you consider that great products and services (and by linkage customers) need great talent to shape, design and deliver them. You can’t have one without the other and when that talent is scarce and in high demand, the messages and communication strategies used to spark potential candidate interest is paramount and needs to be personalised and nuanced for different target groups. Research from Lippincott and LinkedIn (see here) found companies with strong consumer and employer brands financially outperform their peers by 36%. So it is perhaps not surprising that Andy Curlewis, who heads up Cielo’s Global Brand & Digital practice, has been rushed off his feet in 2014. As employer brand goes into orbit, I expect that his feet won’t even touch the floor in 2015. Serves him right for being an Arsenal fan!

10. HR becomes an agent of change as opposed to blocking it

This could be my most wildly optimistic prediction of all, but as the pace of change intensifies and as the old ponderous bureaucratic ways of doing things continue to fail (why else would over 50% of the Fortune 500 from 2000 no longer be in existence?), HR needs to move from change blocker to change agent. Yes, it needs to consistently talk the language of the business and change its mindset of being a cost centre, but more importantly HR needs to be brave. It needs to embrace the opportunities offered through flux, changing employee attitudes, neuroscience, HR Analytics and technology to create real and lasting change in how talent is identified, recruited, activated and retained. Will this happen in 2015? Probably not but let’s at least start the New Year with a modicum of optimism.

About the Author

David is a Director at Cielo (formerly known as Pinstripe & Ochre House), #1 RPO on the Baker's Dozen for global breadth and quality of service. David has helped a number of organisations design talent acquisition programmes that drive effectiveness, growth and competitive advantage. He also speaks and writes on some of the key tenets driving the seismic change in the future of work.

Connect with David by email, LinkedIn or Twitter and take Cielo's Talent Activation Assessment here.

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