This special episode of Hireside Chats is a replug of an insightful, informative, and interactive LinkedIn Live session that was launched on Recruiter’s Day, April 15th, for recruiters world-wide to help them future-proof their recruitment careers in the changing world of work.
The session was conducted by Raghunandan Patre, a seasoned talent strategy consultant and coach. Raghu is Principal Consultant Talent Strategy at Diamondpick. From designing the most optimized talent supply chain systems to building data and technology driven recruiting processes, Raghu’s expertise has helped numerous talent acquisition functions rediscover themselves. He has trained and coached 8000+ talent acquisitions professionals, helping them achieve peak performance.
In this episode he explores why and how recruiters should prepare for the changing world of work.
Episode Highlights
- Future-Proofing recruiting careers is an absolute must to stay relevant in the near future. With the pace at which disruptions are taking place the recruiting world and the talent world will cease to exist in the current form and shape in just a few years from now.
- By 2025, the role of a recruiter will be even more complex than it is today but will create many opportunities for those that can seize them.
- Tech innovations and disruptions are eliminating the transactional and operational part of the TA process with innovative tools and technology. Recruiters have to continue to hone their skills to add value and stay relevant.
- To remain competitive and relevant recruiters will have to get tech savvy and onboard with the latest developments in tech.
- Talent sourcing is de-skilled in today’s market. There are automated tools that can do sourcing more efficiently. So to add value, recruiters can focus on skills/areas like employer branding\ talent branding, best practices benchmarking, redefining feedback forms, assessment rubrics, or anything beyond resume sourcing and fulfillment.
- Skills like grabbing maximum mind share from a candidate in just five minutes, pitching the candidate to the client, and the employer brand to the candidate in a manner the candidate invests himself or herself in the entire process. And that’s exactly how we will be expected to think to stay relevant in the future.
Read the highlights of the session, where our speaker explores strategies to help recruiters navigate the changing world of work and build resilient and successful recruitment capabilities. He also shares valuable insights on the latest trends shaping the world of work, and the skills needed to adapt and excel in this new environment. Learn from real-world examples and discover how to develop a forward-thinking mindset and how to leverage technology to enhance your recruitment capabilities.
Hireside Chats, Episode 6: Future-Proofing Your Recruitment Career for the Changing World of Work
The world of work is rapidly evolving, with shifting dynamics, emerging trends, and changing talent needs. As a recruitment professional, it’s essential to stay ahead of the curve and future-proof your career to thrive in this dynamic landscape.
Is there a need to futureproof our careers?
The pace at which disruptions take place around us, our recruiting world, and the talent world will cease to exist in the current form and shape in a few years from now.
A classic example of this disruption is ChatGPT. Recently an international recruiting platform integrated ChatGPT into their platform – it takes the input as a JV on one side, and on the other side, it takes the input of a resume and very effortlessly, seamlessly gives you an outcome in terms of whether the resume fits the requirement as described in the JD number one. Number two, it even goes on to suggest and recommend the screening questions that you could possibly ask. AI, like ChatGPT, is in its initial stage, and over the next few years, there will be a lot more innovation, a lot more disruption, and a lot more improvement in its capabilities.
So unless you put in conscious efforts towards future-proofing your career, it’s unlikely that you’ll even stay relevant.
By 2025, the role of a recruiter will be even more complex than it is today but it will create many opportunities for those that can seize them.
Simply because of the way the world is changing. Here is an example. There was a pre-covid talent world, and there’s a post covid talent world. In the post covid talent world, things just changed overnight. There was a time we would conduct a recruitment drive, with tens and hundreds of candidates lining up to take interviews. The whole operation was in the logistics of managing the drive. All of that simply became a mystery in the post covid world. We had to reinvent ourselves overnight. We had to figure out how to do virtual hiring overnight; we had to figure out how to sell the brand even without a candidate coming into the premises.
I wrote a futuristic JD to see what a recruitment role may possibly look like in the near future.
Currently, ours is a transaction-intensive function where the focus is on fulfillment. We are given certain mandates, certain demands to fulfill, and we go out and fulfill those demands. Whether you work for an agency or for a corporate function, the mindset is more or less of an auto-taking mindset.
We are told what to do, and we go out and do that. Future recruiting roles will involve taking some degree of ownership of the end outcomes of the business that you are responsible for as a recruitment person. Many of the transaction-intensive elements will either get automated or go into a self-service mode.
How will recruiting roles evolve?
What can you do to add value?
- Leverage Technology: If you want to retain a competitive edge in the current market, you have to leverage tech, and recruiters will be expected to be very technology friendly very technology savvy. You will be expected to be comfortable with tech in the way you manage, implement, and manage tech to enhance your operations and efficiency overall. Recruiters will be expected to be tech savvy, and it is not a choice.
- Talent Intelligence: There is a new discipline within the recruiting world called talent intelligence, which is how we use data insights trends to our advantage to make sure that we are able to make the right talent decisions. And today, globally, a lot of recruiting firms and TA functions are investing in instituting talent intelligence capability within the organizations. You must increase your talent intelligence capabilities; you have to be data savvy. You have to develop a research mindset. You have to develop a data mindset. So you will be expected to leverage talented intelligence insights to influence critical talent decisions.
- Talent Branding: Talent branding is a very futuristic thing. Employer branding and talent branding functions are table stakes.
- Consultative handholding: for critical decisions. Let’s take an example of a banking customer in the US offshoring work to India. They will give their job descriptions and say, we want to hire a full-stack developer. And the full stack developer job description looks a little different in the US than the way it looks in India. So as a recruitment consultant, you should go, you should be able to go back and recommend the right role design. Look at the competitive benchmark data or skill composition depending on the team structure and the construct out here offshore.
And these are some of the ways where you can add value. You could do employer branding; you could do talent branding; you could do best practices benchmarking. You could contribute to redefining your feedback forms. You could contribute assessment rubrics, you could do many other things beyond resume sourcing and fulfillment. And that’s exactly what you’ll be expected to do in a few years from now.
What will the recruiting community be valued for?
Can you prepare the EVP so an employee can develop a position with the employer?
Can you build thriving talent communities?
Can you co-own current goals and contribute to business outcomes?
Can you work with diverse stakeholders in a multicultural environment with a diverse set of stakeholders working in different time zones and metric structures?
Can you influence clinical talent decisions and intelligence, and can you use Google Magnetic platforms to build in?
If you’re able to do all of this, that’s what you’ll be valued for in the future.
You will be valued for skills like:
- Talent communities: This is a cohort of candidates grouped by either a skill or a job, family, or, a technology focus. A group of potential job applicants who may not be currently applying for a job right now and who may not be active job seekers right now, but somewhere they are engaged with the organization’s brand, and you continue to engage this community through various events and content and job posts. And whenever you have a job that comes up, you sort of tap into this talent community. And since they’re already engaged, and invested in the brand, it’s much easier to source from this community than some job board or LinkedIn. Talent communities are fast becoming a successful recruitment tool, and many staffing firms are making investments in internal communities. And you should know the nuance of getting into these communities, engaging them, and eliciting interest from candidates for the given job role.
- Recruitment Marketing Platforms: Putting all your employer branding content out like short videos, your culture, content, and job post, you promote your jobs, you invest in SEO and SEM, and you invest in LinkedIn ads. So you position content to attract traffic, and people are drawn to your career site and then apply for jobs advertised. So the whole science of propagating employer branding content of an organization on various channels and platforms in a manner where we are able to get candidates interested is what we refer to as recruitment marketing. Recruitment marketing skills to attract candidates to the job will be a definite value add.
The Changing Recruitment Landscape
Current state and future state:
Employer branding will be a very integral part of your talent acquisition function, or if you’re running or if you’re part of a staffing firm or recruiting firm, be at the forefront of your efforts. It’ll play the most important role in your talent interaction in a way. So in the current state, if you are a staffing agency, you have an order-taking mindset – you get a JD, you go and hire. What’s the future state that we envision? You become a strategic partner.
So from an order-taking mindset, you may be asked to play a more strategic role. There’s a new role emerging called talent advisors. In fact, there are multiple job posts out there, which are currently in India and in the US, for the role of talent advisors.
How quickly can and how efficiently can you do metrics? Intuitive offer ratios, screening, and shortlisting rate offer running ratios, but the future stage will be the key. Foundational layers will be around experience, which is unless you are not able to deliver an exceptional experience to candidates and internal stakeholders, and your customers, you will not stay relevant in current markets.
Currently, tech is seen as a lever for automation and basic process efficiency. Future stages of tech will be seen as a lever to enhance or build a comprehensive service delivery platform and enhance all those stakeholder experiences. So what’s the difference? Differences in a platform-led approach in the platform-led recruiting world.
There’s a lot of user-driven experience, which means instead of a hiring manager or a client sending you an email with a JD, it could be a scenario where I log into a platform, I have a login as a hiring manager, as a client. I drag that JD. It quickly does a pass, saying it identifies the key skills, it builds a skill map, it builds a sourcing guideline document, and there’s a pre-screen template that gets generated. There’s a feedback form that gets generated, and there’s a sign of what is happening between a recruiter and the hiring manager on the overall strategy of the overall sourcing approach. And maybe it has a backward integration with the talent intelligence data to tell you instantly whether there are standards available in the market.
Recruitment IS marketing. If you’re a recruiter nowadays and you don’t see yourself as a marketer, you’re in the wrong profession.
So for recruitment is marketing, you have to wear a marketer hat, and there is no other way to stay relevant. If I think from an employer branding angle, my point of view is how do I sell this job? How do I stand out from my competition? I have a three-minute window with a candidate and a call. Suppose you don’t think like a marketer when you make that call. Do you have these skill sets? Maybe your current comp, expected comp. And some of these basic hygiene questions, thinking like a marketer – do you have a limited 3, 4, 5-minute window? But if you think like a marketer, you will say, Hey, you know what? I just have a five-minute window. How best can I leverage these five minutes with my candidate to ensure that I’m able to grab the maximum mind share? I’m able to pitch my client, and my brand to the candidate in a manner where I get the candidate to invest himself or herself in the entire process. And that’s exactly how we’ll be expected to think.
If you see a marketer or a branding professional, they have distinct personalities; they’re very explicit, they’re very articulate, slightly lower on inhibition, very confident, and very assertive. These aren’t skills. Think of it as a personality makeover. The journey to becoming a marketer is rather complex. Effort intensive. It takes a lot of effort because from a recruiter to the marketer, the transition of the journey is a transition of skill sets.
- Domain Knowledge: Today, this is a differentiator, not your recruiting skills. You need market context and domain context. What kind of teams that the hiring manager is building, what kind of candidates best fit, and what does the JD mean? What are the key areas? What are the competencies? That is the differentiator.
Talent Attraction and Recruiters
- Design Thinking: Figure out how you can apply designing principles to improve your recruiting processes. To deliver personalization at every step of the way to achieve top-notch candidate experience.
The most important and defining skill set in this is storytelling. In the US and in the West, storytelling, and talent attraction is one of the most expensive training programs costing 1000s of dollars. Storytelling will be your most defining skill set, and that is something that all of you should pick up.
Technology and Recruiters
- HR tech: All organizations will fully embrace HR tech. Whether it’s communication, onboarding talent discovery, or interview experience, the tech will be used across the process. There will be multiple technologies coming together, creating a comprehensive exotic stack for the organization.
- Technology: Conversation intelligence and Chatbots particularly will be used extensively in the recruiting world, which means if you want to stay relevant in the recruiting world, you should know how to use technology to your advantage to bring in more efficiencies, deliver better hiring outcomes, to deliver a better experience for your stakeholders and candidates. You have to be tech-savvy. I don’t think that any of us have a choice anymore.
Your Future Skill Map
So embrace tech, gain an understanding of the business, and this is exactly what you’re expected to do. This is what your future skill map could potentially look like. Go back, do a simple reality check, and do a self-assessment. Figure out where you stand and start making investments in yourself. Sometimes your employers may make those investments on your behalf; they may take an interest in your capability-building, skill-building, career development, and all of that.
One hour a day of learning is a given. Invest at least 60 minutes a day for learning, and this is not just for recruiting. It does not matter which industry, which role, or which function you are part of if you are not investing in learning, in upgrading yourself, or you will not stay relevant.
Invest in yourself, roll up and take ownership of your career progression, and be prepared for the future.
The defining skill sets from this overall future skill map are Talent and employer branding and talent Intelligence.
These are, in my opinion, the most defining skill sets for a recruiter of the future. Everything is important, but particularly these three skill sets are very defining because they are your multipliers. You give me one recruiter today, even with two years of experience, who is exceptionally good at storytelling, who has a handle on employer branding and talent branding aspects of the recruiting function, and who knows how to use talent intelligence. I’ll hire them in a heartbeat.
Don’t forget to invest in yourself, don’t stop learning, learning to learn, develop skills.
This interactive episode ended with a thought-provoking Q&A full of important takeaways on how to stay ahead of the recruiting game.
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