For decades, the rapid advancement in technology has been driving change and transforming how we work and live. Although technology is improving at a fast pace, adoption has been slower but the new technical recruiting trends of 2021 are here to change that.
At the beginning of 2020, nobody could have predicted that an infectious virus would suddenly turn the world on its head. Pandemic became the catalyst for profound changes across the workplaces. Businesses scrambled to implement remote working strategies while trying to transition to e-commerce platforms. Some were successful, but many were not.
COVID-19 has accelerated the Fourth Industrial Revolution, expanding the digitalization of human interaction. The business risks have been amplified by the crisis and include stagnation in advanced economies and lost potential in emerging and developing markets, and the collapse of small businesses.
World Economic Forum – The Global Risks Report 2021
Technology coupled with the impact of the pandemic has become a significant contributor in revolutionizing talent acquisition and employee management.
These technical recruitment trends offer businesses an opportunity to re-evaluate strategies and improve productivity to deliver sustainable workforce agendas.
Recruitment Tools
Sitting at the forefront of recruitment trends are AI, analytics, and automation tools. These progressive approaches are being embraced by technical recruiters to gain data-driven insights and deliver streamlined, accurate, and cost-effective results.
Using a recruitment tool has a compounding effect on the recruitment process. While big tech companies were the first to dabble in AI, it is now becoming a hot technology trend. Businesses across the globe have started to realize that it can help achieve greater efficiency and accuracy in automation efforts.
Recruiters know how time-consuming it is to manually assess resumés, this is where the modern skill test tools are stepping in. AI, analytics, and automation can handle the entire process of sourcing, assessing, and screening applicants and make recruiting easy.
Skill test tools are invaluable in identifying the top talent while also measuring the performance of the recruiters. This is where AI models and predictive analytics offer insights. Using sophisticated algorithms, recruiters can define and measure metrics over a period of time.
Another advantage of using these tools is that it eliminates unconscious bias in hiring. It also helps identify any bias that has crept into recruitment processes in the past. By analyzing the current workforce, recruiters can incorporate more diversity and inclusion by considering a wider, untapped talent pool. The possibilities are endless, and it provides a great opportunity to make the entire recruitment process a lot smarter.
Remote Hiring and Remote Working
Flexible and remote working is becoming the most sought-after job requirement today. Companies are also adapting well in order to attract and retain top performers.
The pandemic has forced remote working, but many businesses were ill-prepared without the proper infrastructure to manage the dispersed workforce. Companies that are able to embrace this shift, have continued with teleworking and onsite working as part of a hybrid business model.
The shift to remote work has also led to the increase in professionals choosing to work remotely and companies looking for remote workers who are productive in a remote environment. Being able to understand how to effectively collaborate regardless of location is the top requirement of any job in 2021. A FlexJobs survey shows that the remote job postings have increased drastically between June and August in 2020.
Businesses see the value in remote working because it also increases their access to a global talent pool that has no geographical boundaries. And as such, platforms like WeCP, that help companies with remote hiring are coming in demand.
The remote work culture has opened an array of opportunities for recruiters especially hiring for tech companies who want to stay relevant in an increasingly competitive market.
Reskilling and Upskilling
Another emerging technical recruiting trend gaining momentum since the pandemic is the decrease in recruitment budgets. This means that recruiters need to be more effective in hiring, but it is also drawing focus on re-skilling and upskilling current employees. According to a recent LinkedIn study, there was a 20% increase in internal mobility since the onset of COVID-19.
Besides reskilling the existing workforce, technically skilled people are hungry to learn new technologies and want to constantly upskill. A 2020 StackOverflow survey highlighted that 70% of developers say the second most important reason why they would look for another job is to work with new technologies.
This is a crucial point for businesses that want to retain valued employees. Recruiting good tech talent is an expensive exercise so providing opportunities to gain new skills will promote innovation and productivity amongst your best performers.
With budgets expected to decrease, recruiters will need to look internally to increase retention rates where a skilled talent pool already exists that simply needs to be nurtured.
Looking Ahead
The tech recruitment landscape will change as trends take hold and new opportunities and challenges come to the fore. But through embracing technology, experimenting, observing, and constantly adapting, recruiters will be able to continue breaking the mold of conventional HR expectations.
WeCP (We Create Problems) is a technical skills screening software for modern recruiters and hiring managers, to evaluate over 2000 technical skills with accurate auto-grading and faster hiring.
Talk to WeCP today to reduce your time, cost and efforts in technical recruiting.
