The worlds of recruiting and marketing are colliding. As organizations find it increasingly necessary to sell their brand to potential candidates, marketing and recruiting teams are working together more closely than ever to attract the right talent.
According to ERE media, this is partly because job candidates are on the hunt much more than they used to be:
“Much like marketers have to market constantly, recruiters must now recruit constantly.” – ERE Media
Because candidates are always on the hunt, recruiters need to be prepared to showcase their employer brand and company culture at any time, as this is so important to potential candidates on the job hunt.
According to Forbes, 78% of candidates agree that the look and feel of a company’s career site is “moderately” to “highly important” to their decision to apply.
Career sites, candidate drip campaigns and branding is where the marketing department shines. As their worlds collide, recruiters and marketers are forced to take a look at their technologies, workflows, and automation processes to drive the best outcomes.
The problem is that the purpose of human resources (HR) technologies and marketing technologies are very different.
Marketing technologies – specifically marketing automation – gained traction from a major shift in the industry from outbound practices to inbound practices, but the same isn’t necessarily true for recruiters.
Recruiters still find more success with outbound recruiting efforts – poaching candidates, sending jobs to search and engaging a passive workforce.
It’s for this reason that recruiters using HR tech are often doing so for organization and outreach purposes – applicant tracking systems (ATSs), HR management systems (HRMSs), and learning management systems (LMSs) are used to organize and push out outbound efforts.
Recruiters would like nothing more than for the best candidates to come to them as opposed to always pioneering outbound campaigns, but just like marketers, they’re concerned about automation.
What do recruiters want from HR tech?
Neither recruiters or marketers want their processes to become completely automated – this takes all of the personalization and humanity out of a brand, making it harder to connect genuinely with possible candidates.
It’s because of a fear of de-personalization that neither are ready to take the plunge into automation completely.
according to Ko Marketing Associates, 88 percent of B2B companies intend to implement marketing automation by the start of the 2017-18 fiscal year, even though implementation has been slow.
This is good news for recruiters working with those marketing teams, as adopting automation technology would alleviate a lot of their manual tasks – a major pain point for HR workers, according to a Brandon Hall Group Study.
- 41% wanted to enable better reporting and analytics on HR data
- 45% wanted to alleviate the burden of manual tasks from HR
- 54% wanted to add additional capabilities or functionality
- 46% want to improve employee experience
Recruiters are going to get what they want – better reporting, less manual functionality, and better employee and candidate experience are all on the horizon for 2016.
HR Tech is going to change recruiting in 2016
All of the experts agree – HR tech is growing across the industry, and it’s moving to the cloud and our mobile devices.
A recent report from Bersin by Deloitte, “HR Technology for 2016: 10 Big Disruptions on the Horizon,” reports on major HR technology trends across the industry.
Some of these changes will make a splash for recruiters, and will change the way both recruiters and marketers work together to amplify an employer’s brand.
Cloud Providers are Redefining Recruiting
We’re going to start to see a major shift – all HR technology systems will start to move to the cloud (mostly pioneered by startups in the HR tech space).
Bersin by Deloitte reports that this market is already strong – an estimate of more than $3 billion went into startups in 2014 and 2015.
Citing several companies that have threatened to redefine the recruitment platform, the HR tech space is full of recruitment platforms that are changing how we link analytics with sourcing, candidate relationship management, video interviewing, and traditional applicant tracking.
Predictive analytics are going to get better.
The definition of analytics has expanded – now instead of simply analyzing our old processes, predictive analytics are going to make it mainstream in the HR tech world.
Bersin by Deloitte reported that Implementing a “data warehouse” is only the beginning. There is now a market of vendors providing predictions, recommendations, and insights on people practices throughout organizations.
These insights are going to support both recruiters and marketers – being able to predict where the best candidates come from will drive both promotional and retainment efforts.
Mobile is now a recruiting necessity
Mobile is no longer something that recruiters should do to stay ahead of the game, it’s now a foundational strategy needed for success.
Mobile’s wide footprint is the reason for such strong changes in both the marketing a recruiting spaces.
There are now more than 2.1 billion smartphone users on the planet. Mobile Internet growth increased by 69 percent in 2014, and 55 percent of that mobile traffic is now video.
Recruiters are realizing that mobile devices is where their candidates are looking, and the technology is shifting (both on the marketing and recruitment side) to best attract the top talent in this space.
The future of HR tech and direct hire recruiting
As the HR technology landscape shifts to drive more inbound candidates, the direct hire industry is settling into it’s own place in this new world.
The future of direct hire also lies in technology – as employers move towards marketplace solutions and vendor management systems (VMSs) to support direct hire efforts, the process looks a lot more like inbound candidates than outreach.
As marketing and recruitment departments continue to align their efforts, technologies and workflows to attract top candidates, they’ll expand their efforts into the direct hire space – as long as they plan for it correctly.
Create a plan for your HR technology and direct hire efforts with our Recruiting Leader Data Toolkit. With six different calculators, worksheets and tools, our toolkit will leave you prepared for the new HR technology landscape, and a solid plan for direct hire recruiting in 2016.