With each new year, there is a new opportunity to reassess and retarget your personal and organizational recruitment plan. While mapping out your upcoming recruitment journey, being aware of the potential obstacles are a must to achieve key benchmarks! Often, organizations assume trends have little or no impact on their operations in one year alone; especially concerning recruitment. However, these 3 trends can make or break your plans and goals, potentially devastating company culture and making growth stagnate. It is not enough to just be aware of them, but to plan around them is to enable your organization’s success.

 

1. Growth Potential as a Requirement

 

When making a 2023 recruitment plan it starts with those already in your organization. Not only should you shape your organization’s recruitment values around existing employees, but existing employees also want to feel desired and supported. This requires an internal recruitment effort beyond just holiday gift cards and birthday cakes.

 

Per Microsoft's most recent Work Trend Index, 76% of employees would stay longer if there was more beneficial learning and development support. Not only that, but 56% of employees and 68% of decision-makers say there are not enough growth opportunities in their current organization.

 

Employees want to learn and develop as business professionals, especially the ambitious Gen Z and Millennial generations. Here are some ways you can meet their expectations:

- Ask them in which ways they want to develop and tailor your efforts

- Hold both soft and hard skill training sessions with internal and external experts

- Give them opportunities to work outside their day-to-day role, such as a job shadow program

 

 

2. We’re Human, We Need Social Connection

 

In the past years, social isolation was a given for the safety of those around us. However, as restrictions get lifted across the globe one thing is apparent: employees missed social connection and schedule flexibility and autonomy is preferred.

 

However, 73% of employees and 78% of decision makers need more than just expectation to come into the office. The previous notions of in-office work needs to change to retain talent and encourage a collaborative work environment.

 

The best way to encourage desire to work in-person is to facilitate and enable team building through non-conventional means. No doubt, easier said than done. However, you know your teams better than others do, so have faith. Try, for example, paintballing, rotational “game day”, or using company communication platforms for interpersonal connectivity.

 

3. Utilization of AI

Although bonding is important, productivity is too! Without a good balance between the two, an organization cannot be profitable or achieve its desired goals. Thanks to advances in technology in recent years, AI can be utilized to make your recruitment efforts more effective and less monotonous for your HR teams!
 

Letting your HR team do tasks that are interesting and challenging for their skills and development will not only create a more effective team, but (as mentioned in trend #1) encourage them to stay longer!
 

Allow your employees to less paper-pushing whenever possible, in numerous ways:

- Data entry and talent pool management

- Pre-qualification research prior to the first interview

- Interactive, real-time dashboards personalized to your business

And more!

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AI is a wonderful, time-saving and cost-saving tool however, it must be used properly and has different uses based on industry, geography, and organization size. Do your own research on what tools work best for the organization.

 

TIP! Start with Datacruit’s ATS solution to effectively modernize your enterprise!

Marketing starts with human resources. Previous notions of HR and marketing responsibilities have associated them as separate, albeit still complementary, roles and efforts. However, the relationship between HR and marketing should be thoroughly unified and collaborative for an organization's betterment.

Efforts to support and build organizational culture while recruiting new members that fit into that culture is an extremely important, yet extremely difficult, responsibility. Yet, per a Robert Walters’ Whitepaper, 67% of professionals feel they have been misled about the company culture during the recruitment process. These same professionals attribute marketing and HR as two of the four leading drivers of company culture. 

As HR and business leaders, working together with your marketing teams and having knowledge of marketing operations is instrumental. This transforms a potentially critical business risk around into creating an optimized and stronger company.

3 Primary Aspects:

HR has a unique viewpoint into an organization’s well-being and future potential that is often underutilized in HR marketing. HR, as a department and career, has three primary commitments to HR marketing efforts and campaigns. These aspects help direct, inspire, and facilitate a better company culture and encourages better new matches into organizations.

1 - Vision & Company Culture

No organization exists without some sort of vision for operations, employees, or their future. However, some fail to explicitly state that vision causing HR, marketing, and other departments to only see the partial vision and core goals.

When it pertains to the HR and HR marketing vision, company culture has never been more important. In a Glassdoor survey, 77% of adults would consider a company’s culture before applying, plus 79% would consider mission and purpose before applying. 

Company culture, according to Indeed.com, is a set of both shared core values and practices within an organization, internally and externally. When a culture is well-defined and applied to marketing, it appeals to top applicant prospects who will then go on to uphold and prioritize those values.

What can HR do to uncover and shape company culture:

1) Research Your Company’s Employees

- Referred to as a “Culture Audit.”
- This may sound strange at first, but your organization’s current members can tell a lot about what your organization prioritizes.
- Think of it as a culture-based iceberg!

2) Create Posters With Creative Marketing

- These should contain explicitly stated topics such as a mission statement or company values/vision

3) Bring in a Third-Party to Audit Your Culture

- Research the best-fit before doing this, but a culture consultant company can be extremely helpful in revealing the underlying assumptions you and your HR team may not see!

Further, mission statements can be a helpful framework to guide this vision to help develop and manage human resources programs-such as HR marketing.

TIP: If you, or your organization, is experiencing a lack of strong direction or leadership this could be your chance to show initiative! Learn how!

2 - Strategy

Without a strategy, a vision will never be completed. HR marketing strategies should be an in-depth “how” you plan to achieve the vision. Whether it is a talent pool, career page, or social media campaign; keep in mind that overtime these strategies should adapt to the organization’s needs and culture. Or if the traditional methods of recruiting are not working for your organization, try a new approach and method to get the ball rolling! 

Be as specific, authentic, and consistent as possible, to help both HR and marketing enact the vision. Candidates can sense inauthentic and inconsistent messaging, which will push potential great candidates away from applying.

Benefits to building a cohesive strategy that reflect your brand and culture include:

- Better Engaged Employees
- Positive Company Perceived Opinion
- Higher Employee Retention
- Increased Productivity & Profitability
- Quicker Open-Position Fill Time
- Reduced Hiring & Recruitment Costs
- Right Candidates, the First Time Around

TIP: Confused on how to create a high-quality talent pool? Use these definitions to help you build out your strategy

3 - Delegation & Partnership

A single person cannot man a ship by themselves, the same applies to HR marketing. Clearly, there are a lot of elements to effectively carrying-out HR marketing.

Marketing and HR efforts should always go together and this requires HR to give some responsibility to the marketing team or a third-party. It can be hard to allow others to execute the vision, but sometimes a new perspective can be more helpful and drive better results.

HR in the role of visionaries and strategists are wildly more important to marketing than most know. HR and business leaders may feel lost and unsure how to go about promoting synergy between the departments. 

Here are some helpful tips to get the ball rolling:

• Schedule Recurring Meetings
  Whether it is daily, weekly, or monthly, HR and marketing meetings regularly can start and enable further conversations about HR marketing.

• Sync with Senior Leadership
  Upper leadership often has been around longer than most organization members, so start with the beginning! Sync up and ask them questions about HR and marketing, explaining why they should be more interconnected. 

• Suggest Floor Plan Adjustments
  Close proximity between the two departments encourages conversation and collaboration. Though this may seem a logistical nightmare, synergy and interdepartmental friendships would be guaranteed.

• Interdepartmental Trainings & Seminars
  Schedule recurring training sessions and seminars about current/past/future initiatives, projects, or just a think-tank to show both sides of the coin to the HR and marketing teams.

 

Connecting with your in-house marketing team about their responsibilities and roles can be a helpful resource. However, they may not fully understand the reasoning behind your inquiry. In that common scenario, reach out to experts,attend webinars, or connect with fellow HR professionals to get insight on how to proceed.

 

TIP: HR can be a demanding career that can become dull after time. Read these 5 ways to connect with fellow HR professionals to avoid the inevitable burnout!