Prognosticating is a fine, old end-of-the-year tradition in our field. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that the devil we know is bowing out and the devil we don’t know has yet to appear, but we seem especially interested in these forecasts during the last days of December.
How much credence should we put in them?
Well, the dictionary defines prognostication as an activity in which you “predict according to present indications or signs.” To my way of thinking, however, figuring out the future is nothing more than guesswork gussied up as deductive reasoning. Nevertheless, I think it’s helpful to look ahead at what might happen if only to scare ourselves into paying more attention to the emerging trends and issues around us. So, without further ado, here are my predictions for the field of recruiting in 2010.
We’ll begin to see job boards as more than job posting platforms. Many of today’s job boards think they’re in the recruitment advertising business. They aren’t. And the best know it. These sites believe they’re in the talent delivery business so they are introducing a range of new services that enable us to target the exact demographic we want to source and do so in a way that saves us time and money. For example, some job boards will now help craft job postings so they motivate even the most passive of prospects, others will offer pre-screening questions embedded in job postings so only qualified candidates can apply, and still others will pre-qualify applicants and provide a short list of the ten best candidates for review. All of these services are or will be offered at a price point that is considerably less than that charged by the vendors which have traditionally provided them to us. In an era of tight budgets and smaller staffs, this expanded capability may not be a silver bullet, but it’s certainly a solution worthy of consideration.
We’ll graduate from Social Recruiting 101 and enter the era of Social Recruiting 102. There’s no doubt that social recruiting is an important new tool for our profession, but 2010 will mark our shift from its starry eyed early adoption to squinty-eyed mature application. Recruiters will look for empirical data to determine (a) which social recruiting tactics work and, more importantly, which work best, (b) which social media sites perform the best for which kinds of talent, (c) which social recruiting tactics and media deliver a better return on recruiter time and money than traditional sourcing and recruiting methods, and (d) what steps must be taken to integrate social recruiting tactics and media into the other sourcing and recruiting activities used by our organizations. Once we have that knowledge, we will be able to articulate the rationale for social recruiting and build the business case to implement it effectively.
We’ll see compliance replace administration as the bane of our existence. Our profession has long been plagued with too much process and paper, whether it’s electronic or the old fashioned kind. Sadly, we often spend more of our time on such administrivia than on the recruiting our employers actually need. That problem, however, will become a fond memory as we are forced to spend an ever increasing amount of our time (and our talent) on defending our organizations from the fine-happy auditors of the Federal Government’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). Ensuring compliance with our nation’s commitment to equal opportunity and affirmative action is obviously an important priority, but unfortunately, it will also become a strategy for balancing the budget with penalties imposed on our employers. Now’s the time, therefore, to make sure our sourcing strategies are free of adverse impacts (unintended or otherwise) and our data collection and storage procedures are up to federal standards.
We’ll worry as much about the content of our corporate career sites as we do about their search engine performance. Sure, it’s important to invest in search engine optimization for the career area on our organization’s site, but such an investment will not improve its yield if all that visitors find when they get there is a cure for insomnia. For that reason, more and more of us will decide to put off SEO until we have accomplished CSO or career site optimization. We will invest first in improving the features and functionality of our sites so that those destinations attract both active job seekers and passive prospects. And, we will transform the visitor experience from a transaction to a relationship so that our candidates not only pay an initial visit, but come back over and over again. In essence, we will optimize our sites’ ability to attract and access the best of the talent our employers need. Then and only then will we spend the money to optimize their ranking on search engines.
We’ll begin to act as if we have a career too. Recruiters are some of the most selfless people on the planet. All day, every day, they work to help others improve their career prospects. What the Great Recession has proved is that we need to take care of own careers, as well. Thousands of recruiters are now in transition because they thought that by devoting their full time and attention to their employer’s success, they would also be assuring their own. That clearly didn’t work, so from now on, we will work as hard on ourselves as we do for our employers. We will continue to do our best work on-the-job, but at the same time, we will give equal priority to building up our skill set, expanding our network of contacts, keeping an eye on the financial condition of our employer and the political condition of our boss and the countless other things that maintain the fitness of our careers. In short, we will act as if we (and our careers) matter too.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit my blog at Weddles.com/WorkStrong
P.S. Please tell your friends and colleagues about WEDDLE’s Newsletter. They’ll appreciate your thoughtfulness, and so will we.
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This edition of the Guide, our 9th, introduces an entirely new format: The Top 100, our pick of the most effective job boards and career portals on the Web, and the Best & the Rest, a directory of over 10,000 sites organized by career field, industry and geographic focus. And at just $39.95, it’s a true recession buster, as well!
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Our Featured Employment Web Site
Site Spotlite … from the pages of WEDDLE’s 2009/10 Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet.
There are 50,000 job boards and career portals now in operation in North America and an equal number operating elsewhere around the world. The key to recruiting top talent online, therefore, is knowing where to find and how to select the best sites for each of your requirements. WEDDLE’s 2009/10 Guide profiles The Top 100 employment sites on the Web today and provides The Best & the Rest, a listing of over 10,000 such sites worldwide. It’s all of the information you need to determine which job boards will deliver the optimum yield for you. For example:
Compterwork.com
Post full time jobs: Yes
Post part time, contract or consulting jobs: Yes-All
Distribution of jobs: International
Fee to post a job: $301-350/posting
Posting period: 30 days
Can posting be linked to your site: Yes
Resume database: Yes
Number of resumes: 380,000+
Source of resumes: Direct from candidates
Top occupations among visitors: Engineering, Finance & Accounting, Information Systems, Healthcare, Medical
Other services for employers: Automated resume agent, Banner advertising, Status Reports: postings & banners
Member, International Association of Employment Web Sites: Yes
Get a Free WORK STRONG Wristband!
These are tough times for everyone in the workplace. Husbands, wives, partners, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers.
It doesn’t matter whether you have two or thirty-two years of employment experience, today’s world of work is a risky, even threatening place. And it is also the place where you spend one-third or more of your day.
So what should you do? Give yourself and everyone else you care about the gift of a hopeful future. Give Work Strong: Your Personal Career Fitness System.
Click here to get a 34% discount on the book at Amazon.com!
Or, if you’d like A FREE WORK STRONG WRISTBAND, order the book directly from WEDDLE’s by calling 203.964.1888 or clicking here.
Don’t delay. Give the gift of a hopeful future. Get Work Strong right away!