EN – The modern job market – what are the most important trends?
According to a report prepared by the World Economic Forum, “formulating effective re-training and up-skilling strategies for the next five years will be essential for maximizing business performance. […]. The number of jobs requiring creativity, innovation and empathy will increase, as will the demand for analytical thinking skills.” Moreover, “60% of workers will require training by 2027.”
This phenomenon is both an opportunity and a threat for companies, depending on how quickly they manage to close the skill gap and manage current and new employees in terms of up-skilling or re-skilling or the recruitment itself. This is also both an opportunity and a threat for representatives of HR departments, recruiters and career advisors operating on the market. In order to be among the top experts, you have to be knowledgeable about the typology of employees in terms of commitment and competence development in order to design new career paths in the most effective way and adjust profiles accordingly.
This is coupled with the huge impact of technology, which has drastically changed the behavior of individual players on the job market, resulting in various trends, which we will discuss in a moment.
The knowledge about the modern and changing job market is necessary, for example, for:
- HR departments, to design accurate strategies in the field of recruitment, employer branding, engagement management and the entire employee life cycle
- people working in recruitment / executive search on the side of agencies or companies, in order to identify and attract the best talents
- people who work in the field of broadly understood career consulting (career advisors, career consultants, career coaches, specialists supporting career change, outplacement consultants) to best support their clients.
Data shows that advice based on knowledge about the job market (e.g. how to write a CV or use LinkedIn) changes approximately every 1-2 years. In other words: tips that worked three years ago may harm the candidate / employee today.
The most important trends in a nutshell:
#1: Employer Branding
According to the HRM Institute, EB strategy is one of the most important priorities for 30% of companies, but 47% of companies allocate a smaller budget for it and 5% of companies do not include EB in their budget at all.
Effective employer branding is not only about nice graphics, but above all it’s about knowing the typology of candidates and what individual profiles expect from companies in job ads and in recruitment processes.
#2: Technology: chatbots and smartphonization
According to KodaBots, more and more “smart” chatbots are in contact with candidates: 73% of candidates did not realize that they were talking to artificial intelligence. However, 38% of respondents prefer to talk to a human. Additionally, according to SmartRecruiters, the number of searches for job ads from mobile devices now exceeds 1 billion per month. Almost 90% of candidates use a smartphone when looking for offers, and 45% of active candidates applied for jobs via their mobile devices.
Automating the recruitment process for maximum efficiency is a necessity today, but we cannot forget about desirable candidates who simply do not want, do not like or do not know how to talk to a bot. This may result in the loss of potential talent in the organization. Or, from the candidate’s perspective, it may result in losing some of the chances of finding a job. The role of HR, recruiters or career advisors is no longer limited to “purely HR” issues; they must have knowledge about the functioning of the above-mentioned IT tools and technologies so that they can effectively support their organizations, as well as their employees, candidates or clients.
#3: LinkedIn
Depending on the study, between 87% and 95% or more of recruiters use LinkedIn regularly to find suitable candidates. It also turns out that employees recruited via LinkedIn are 40% less likely to leave the company within the first 6 months.
Everybody needs to know how LinkedIn works (including the algorithm, filter functionality, automatic profile ranking, etc.); HR / recruiter will identify the best profiles more efficiently, and will be able to positively influence employer branding with full awareness. On the other hand, a career advisor will be able to prepare a client’s profile more effectively to increase their visibility among the target group.
#4: ATS
According to eRecruiter, 90% of recruiters use ATS (Applicant Tracking System). According to Career Angels’ data, 60-70% of recruitment for managerial and executive positions is also carried out via ATS.
Knowing how ATS function will allow people working in HR or recruitment to identify the weaknesses of such systems. Based on that, one can build appropriate strategies, for example, to adapt the content in job ads, and improve candidate experience. You can also prevent the best candidates from being rejected because of the system ignoring them for “formal reasons”, meaning not being able to read correctly the content of a CV placed in tables, columns, frames or footers. Obviously, such knowledge can also be used to the client’s advantage to design a CV that will not only meet the technical requirements, but will also be suitable for profiling for the job ad.
#5: HR Analytics and Tests
According to the LinkedIn Global Trends 2020 report, 73% of companies stated that focusing on HR analytics is their priority for the next few years, but at the same time, 55% of talent specialists say they still need help implementing basic people management analytics.
Herbert Heneman and Timothy Judge, in their book “Staffing Organizations,” claim that tests conducted before employment, including aptitude and psychometric ones, are a much more effective method of predicting the future performance than a candidate’s education and job interviews alone (they claim that cognitive ability tests are 37% more accurate indicators of future performance than a college degree).
Knowledge regarding the advantages and disadvantages of competency tests available on the market will help in better management and planning of employees’ career paths, optimization of the recruitment process and ensuring the consistency of creating the organizational culture. Additionally, this knowledge is necessary to examine and diagnose one’s potential, plan next steps in their career, and support them in changing industries or re-training.
#6: Plug & Play
According to Career Angels’ observations, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the companies’ readiness to employ a “potential” instead of “ready” candidates (so-called “plug & play”) has significantly decreased.
Consequently, when working with an employee, candidate or a client, you should adapt the profile as closely as possible to the prevailing market requirements. Additionally, you should be more careful when formulating career goals, and manage plans that may be too ambitious.
According to Career Angels data, the effects of the increase in automation and new technologies on the job market were already visible in 2016. According to the World Economic Forum’s report, many employees around the world will need to re-train / up-skill due to the green transformation of enterprises, the increasing importance of creativity and analytical thinking, big data and technologies related to artificial intelligence and climate change. For this to be successful, qualified and change-aware specialists are needed both inside and outside the organization: HR department employee, recruiter, coach or career advisor. The key to success is having professional knowledge based on research and reliable data. Competencies in the field of Career Advisory are not only about knowing how to format a CV; it is primarily about tracking and understanding trends in the job market, including changes caused by technology (smartphones, ATS, LinkedIn, HR analytics).
If knowledge in the area of career consulting may be useful to you, we encourage you to familiarize yourself with the postgraduate program “Career Advisory in Practice”, which was created in cooperation with the Warsaw University of Technology Business School. It is dedicated to people who would like to become experts with the skills necessary to properly and effectively provide broadly understood career consulting services.
Read about the details of the program and the recruitment process here.
