Despite a great diversity in corporate businesses, objectives and cultures, recruitment challenges tend to standardize. Indeed social networks, mobile recruitment, employer branding and candidate sourcing belong to the most addressed topics of events and conferences which are dedicated to recruitment.

To what extent can we assert that these topics are part of the current recruitment trends? What are their causes? How will they evolve?

1. A „Mobile“ Visibility on Social and Professional Networks

Our access to information has deeply changed with state-of-the-art 3rd Generation mobile devices. Beside a fast on-the-go access to our mail and the news, we can now directly make purchases through our cell phones with applications serving as extensions of online business sites (Groupon, Easyjet,UCG…). In some countries you can even buy a bus ticket using your phone. By 2015, 40% of all payment transactions will be made out of smartphones*.

Along this, social and professional networks have also expanded rapidly and are now mostly accessed by their members via their mobile devices. Considering this fact, recruiting companies absolutely need to be visible amongst social networks communities. Posting their job ads on well-known apps which technology is smooth (LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, Monster…) enables them to ensure a wide visibility amongst users / potential candidates without having to develop their own app. With this phenomenon „Mobile Recruiting“ is now a well-known term, according which applying to a job within one click is made possible. However this practice is not yet widespread in Europe.

Recruitment: 2012 Trends Review

2. HR Marketing and Employer Branding Strategy

The second trend is the adoption of an HR marketing strategy to „sell“ the company as an employer amongst candidates. This is „employer branding“. Its

measures aim at „selling“ open positions while distinguishing themselves from other recruiting companies. Now companies engage dialogue with candidates using their Facebook / LinkedIn pages**. They also post team, offices and product pictures in order to give candidates an overview of their future work environment. Long exhaustive content progressively give way to blogs and other interactive portals with employee pictures and testimonials. If they reflect reality, these testimonials are truly appreciated. Still, many companies embellish this material choosing testimonials which content is rather doubtful with such quotes: „I live for my job…“ and glossy pictures.

3. Performance Analytics

To ensure ROI, more and more analyzes are regularly conducted in order to measure recruitment performances. These analyses help collecting data on the campaigns effectiveness, the perception of candidates for the brand. They also help identifying recruitment channels that offer the best results. Costs, quality, time, hiring manager satis

faction and staff turnover are analyzed regularly.

4. Proactive Recruitment: Candidate Sourcing

Candidate sourcing is slowly becoming one important pillar in recruiting. Companies are setting up resources to source „passive“ candidates. It is highly recommended that recruiters do not improvise as sourcing consultants. The thing is, it is two different jobs. This is the reason why, many companies prefer to partner with sourcing professionals. In a context of economic crisis, some companies are compelled to lay off some employees. This gave birth to a new sourcing trend called: „predictive sourcing“. It aims at approaching individuals some time before they even look for a job.

Caroline Mancioppi, Author

5. A maximized Candidate Experience

This last trend is meant to facilitate applications but also to take care of each candidate, even the rejected ones. These latter are more likely to provide bad publicity, if the reason why their application fell out, is not explained to them. Moreover, maintaining a good relationship with them can make them apply to another position, for which their profile might be a better match this time. Each step done by applying candidates is analyzed to be improved: endless online questionnaires that must be filled out manually are not appreciated and make many candidates abandon their application, interviews that are rescheduled many times, assessments for which the candidate was not prepared, role games of the bad and the good recruiter… None of this helps offering a positive experience to candidates.

However, candidates who are satisfied with the way their application was handled will want to share their experience among the communities they belong to: Facebook, LinkedIn, Kununu, glassdoor… In the end it is very important that candidate experience aligns with the employer branding promises.

• Juniper Research Limited*
• Potential Park, M-Com Ranking**

For further information on candidate sourcing: www.serendi.com