HR professionals, leaders, and employers would do well to take them into consideration while designing their talent and people strategies for the remaining year.

Last month Korn Ferry Futurestep released a list of predictions for Talent trends this year. Lets take a look at them.

December and January are the months when a flurry of posts regarding the year gone by or predicting how the coming year is going to be, dominate your social feed. As we inch closer to the end of the first month in this year, we present one last list of trends to watch out for this year. 

Last month, Korn Ferry Futurestep came up with a few predictions in the talent domain for this year. “More personal, more segmented, more strategic, and more driven by an up-and-coming generation”, that’s how experts at Korn Ferry Futurestep think the talent acquisition process is going to be in 2018. We take a look at the ten predictions they came up with (for the sake of brevity, the predictions have been paraphrased and reorganized: 

The Impact of Technology 

With technology, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI), effectively taking over the burdensome work of sourcing candidates, recruiters will be able to focus on delivering outstanding candidate experience and focus on people more than ever before. Integration of all aspects of recruiting, including sourcing, assessments, scheduling, creating accurate compensation models and follow-up with candidates, into a single platform will simplify processes further. Furthermore, use of AI and social technology tools will allow for hyper-personalized communication. Identification, segmentation, and targeting of candidates based on their location, education, or experience will get a big boost. Lastly, technology will also help in further proliferation of the ‘Gig Economy’, enabled by the high-speed internet and new age collaboration tools. Roles like IT, marketing and sales will increasingly go remote, but at the cost of a ‘cohesive company culture’. 

The Impact of Changing Workforce

As millennials step up to become leaders, they face opportunities and challenges in equal parts. One the on hand they are more flexible, driven and understand company culture better, but, on the other hand, they are yet to learn how to manage and deal with colleagues and seniors, and master face-to-face communications. Secondly, the urgent need for candidates with new skills, and a dearth of the same will necessitate a rise in internal hiring. Leaders will focus on re-skilling and promote existing employees more than ever. Next, organizations will try to recruit new college hires, owing to rising talent competition. This means a thrust on making employment opportunities more attractive to young graduates. Lastly, the remaining sense of taboo around job hopping will weaken further, as companies find new ways to attract qualified and experienced candidates. Consequently, organizations will focus to retain existing high-performers, by offering them development and advancement opportunities, along with creative reward packages.

The Importance of Communication

Communication with candidates will be instant and real-time, with no lags or delays. The interactions will continue to shift to social platforms – extending to Whatsapp, Twitter, and even Instagram – and as a result, become faster and more efficient. Next, creative communication channels – video testimonials, games, simulated AI or written experiences – that relay a true picture of the working culture in an organization will gain prominence and strive to help potential applicants determine if they are a right fit for the job. Lastly, the realization that candidates are also customers will force the talent acquisition and marketing departments to work closer than ever before. Fairness, respect, and clarity will be the focus of all communications from companies. 

Futurestep CEO Byrne Mulrooney says that the pace of technology advancements is critical to the change that we will witness this year, as it allows for recruiters to focus exclusively on people and strategy. “Linking business strategy to talent strategy has always been critical to the success of talent acquisition professionals, and today, technology frees up experts in our profession to do what they do best – offer sound advice to their business partners, create a warm and welcoming candidate experience and get results,” he says.

The predictions are important and definitive indicators of the challenges, developments, and opportunities in the talent acquisition domain in 2018. HR professionals, leaders, and employers would do well to take them into consideration while designing their talent and people strategies for the remaining year.