The news site of the Australian HR Institute HRM recently talked about some of the things that are shaping up to be big recruitment trends in 2021. As EAs, you might be involved in the recruitment process and it’s important to be across the latest information. HRM spoke with three experts about their top 3 recruitment trends for 2021:
- Diversify your talent pools
2020 saw the amount of job listings being posted to job advertisement websites like Seek and Indeed take a significant drop. And to make up for their losses last year, these job advertisement sites are raising the cost of posting a job opening. The obvious pitfall of this price increase is that it’s more expensive to get the word out there, but it also makes it harder to get approval from your company. With higher price points, this might change how your company goes about advertising the job opening. Ineke McMahon, director at P2P Learning & Development Academy, says recruiters should start utilising LinkedIn to search for candidates. LinkedIn is already a popular platform for this but it can be tricky to find the right candidate. McMahon says it’s important for employers to start honing their LinkedIn research skills to find the right person for the role.
2. Embrace virtual
Vanessa Fajnkind, CEO of Brook Recruitment, made her company’s recruitment processes virtual in 2020 and although she’s based in Melbourne, she can place hire candidates in other states with the help of video conferencing.
Zoom meetings and interviews have become part of the new norm with most workers participating in a virtual interview more often than face-to-face. While Zoom follows the traditional model of having an interviewer and interviewee present, there is new technology that can speed up the interviewing process even more.
AVI (automated video interviews) are becoming much more common. AVI’s don’t require a physical interviewer to be present and instead a question will pop up on screen and the interviewee’s answer will be recorded for review at a later time.
“In one assignment we video screened 20 candidates. I think we saved about 4 hours of time,” says McMahon.
“It also made rejecting candidates a lot easier, as we could give specific examples of how they answered the questions versus the shortlisted candidates.”
3. Is ageism on the rise?
Unfortunately, not all recruitment trends in a post-COVID world are positive and the rise of ageism is one that needs to be closely monitored. Diversity Australia CEO, Steven Asnicar, says he’s noticed a worrying trend where employers think candidates over 40 are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 and are using that as an excuse not to hire them.
While this is obviously a discriminatory problem, it’s also a missed opportunity for employers. Older candidates bring with them a wealth of knowledge and experience that could highly benefit the business. Asnicar is worried that this trend will only worsen with the government’s introduction of the JobMaker Hiring Credit scheme, which offers employers a financial incentive to employ candidates aged 16-35 before 6 October 2021.
Recruitment took a big hit last year and it’s expected that this year will see a rise in both jobseekers and companies looking to rebuild their talent pools. Keep an eye out for these trends in your company’s recruitment process and always remember to uphold equal employment opportunities.
