What will be the biggest recruitment challenges for 2020?
2020 has been, so far at least, a completely unexpected year. We started it at full speed, with record numbers on all floors and suddenly came March and everything was turned upside down. So, we had to slow things down a little bit. Starting May, things were getting back on track, so it's only fair to say that the first half of the year has been a rollercoaster.
Probably the most important change we have witnessed of that of a candidate driven market turning into an employee driven market. In this environment, we had to make sure we are still meeting our candidates' needs, which exploded in no more than 2 months and to also personalise the offer for our clients.
This year has been all about absolute personalisation, about niched targeting and about bringing automation in HR into the day to day practice.
What would you focus on when designing a long-term recruitment strategy for a company?
Strategic and data driven actions. Everyone wants to see results and they want to see them now. So it's important to lose the "one size fits all" mentality and build everything according to the very specific needs of each of our customers and match those needs to the needs of a specific category of candidates and employees. Everything is granulated to bits and for this to be possible we need automation and new media tools, which, actually, exceed the limits of traditional HR. I'm talking about mixing matching algorithms, to business intelligence, to digital, marketing, content and even PR campaigns. It's a 360 approach.
Hiring excellence - To what extent has the impact of recruitment processes on organizations changed?
Recruitment processes are still extremely important, even though, at this point, HR Managers have the broadest range of candidates of the past years. Unfortunately, they don't always have the same budgets so every recruitment has to return its investment as soon as possible. You can't afford to lose time or money with the wrong person for the job. Especially when it comes to top talents.
So, everyone is looking twice not only when recruiting, but also, writing a job ad, when creating a digital campaign, when building an employer branding strategy and so on.
It is true that for about a month, approximately 50% of the Romanian employers stopped all new hiring, but things are getting better week by week. For example, we had more than 13.000 new jobs only in the past week. In May, we had over 40.000. So, we are returning to a normal, dynamic rhythm, but in abnormal conditions.
What is the biggest challenge now in the recruitment automation market?
Fortunately, the advantages of recruitment automation are so obvious and immediate for everyone that the only real challenge is to constantly improve it and go one extra mile. For example, when we launched Candidate Fitness, our matching algorithm, our clients were raving about its benefits, especially those hiring white collar candidates. When you get to cut by half the time it takes you to close one open position, you adopt that technology and ask for more :)
What would you advise the Romanian market for next year?
I would advise them not to forget that this was just a phase and we might get back to a candidate driven market sooner than we think. So please do not lose all the focus and all the momentum you had when employer branding was a priority. Another advice would be to always use a data driven approach. This type of approach always pays off and you get a qualitative return.
How will recruitment change because of the COVID-19?
It has already changed, just as I said before. Everything is getting extremely transactional, with a lower tolerance for trial and error. And this is particularly delicate when you receive more than 20.000 applications for just one job post - which happens very often these days.
As far as candidates are concerned, our studies show that, at least for the next 6 months, the candidates with no experience, blue collar workers with no qualification and freelancers will have to try twice as hard in order to get a job. This has never been an issue in the past 5-6 years, but right now, we all have to get used to a new normality.
Thank you for your answers!
