Business and HR leaders are concerned about this skills shortage (and here we are talking about the skills required by US businesses and the skills US workers have) and among HR professionals, 75% of recruiters deal with this skills gap among candidates who apply for job openings. With implications and impact on the overall economy, the talent shortage is a serious challenge for organizations intensified by new technologies they use.
Let’s talk about numbers. According to the 2019 State of the Workplace report, there were 7 million jobs open in December 2018, with only 6.3 million unemployed people looking for work. “over 50% of respondents feel that skills shortages have worsened or greatly worsened in their organizations in the last two years.”
Missing skills. The trade skills (Carpentry, plumbing, welding, machining, etc.) are the top technical skills missing, and among soft skills missing, we find problem-solving, critical thinking, innovation, and creativity.
“83% of respondents have had trouble recruiting suitable candidates in the past 12 months.” Why? To make a point, in this following infographic we list the top reasons why organizations are struggling to hire the right candidate for the job: competition from other employees, candidates that do not have the needed work experience, nor technical skills, mismatched salary, benefits are not competitive for the market, and so on.
Although it is a burden for many employers and recruiters out there, it can create an opportunity for a company to identify the missing skill, figure how to obtain them, and get a sense of how to position their workforce for the future of work.
Fortunately, there are several ways in which the skills gap can be reduced. How do you bridge the skills gap? Where there’s a problem, there’s a solution. Follow us and stay tuned for the second part of the graphic, where we look at what can be done.
Here’s a look at the way candidates perceive Artificial Intelligence in the recruitment interview stage.
“The future of recruitment hangs in the balance”, says Craig Fisher. Couldn’t agree more. While recruiters find themselves in the AI learning process and try to ease their work with the use of AI, candidates have something to say as well, don’t they? The graphic below is based on a survey where more than 200 job candidates were asked about how comfortable they are interacting with an online robot (chatbot app) to speed up the interview process. Let’s see how comfortable candidates are answering initial questions about the interview process, scheduling interviews and helping with interview preparation, and performing skills assessment.
When it comes to: a) Answering initial questions about the interview process, the results are as follows: 21.17% are extremely comfortable 36.9% fairly comfortable 23.42% uneasy 18.92 extremely uneasy
b) Scheduling interviews and helping with interview preparation, we can see that: 36.94% are fairly comfortable 29.28% extremely comfortable 16.67% are uneasy, 17.57% are extremely uneasy.
c) Performing skills assessment: 35.59% are fairly comfortable 25.23% are extremely comfortable 18.92% are uneasy 20.27% are extremely uneasy.
Because we earlier talked about balance, we can notice from the numbers above, that most candidates seem to be open working with robots at least in this part of the recruitment process: the interview. There is no doubt that we need the human touch in the recruitment processes. Candidates expect it and recruiters are not planning to leave that aside, but there are low-level processes that can be automated and ease every party involved. The future of work will be influenced by Artificial Intelligence and the way we look at it, the way we learn and how quickly we adapt to it, as AI has proven to be in many ways a helping hand.
There is a better way to recruiting than virtually moving resumes and candidates around on the recruiter’s desktop. It all comes down to the human interaction and depth of understanding of a candidate’s unique complexity. With that in mind, the chances of getting the best and right talent your organization needs, grow exponentially. Why even bother? Can’t we just count on our “guesstimation” skills? Beyond achievements and resumes, there are multiple facets of the candidates’ personality that will reflect on their long-term performance. Why take blind chances? At SourceMatch, we count on staying human in the recruitment process, but also use validated systems and proprietary assessments that quantify all dimensions of a candidate’s profile that are predictive of success on the job.
The skills gap is very real and affects the recruiting efforts of most companies. They have trouble finding enough of the right level of talent and skills. Recruiters’ efforts are affected by an imbalance of high demand for talent and low availability and hence why many times they count on salary to convince candidates to make a move. From that, an artificial career progression ensues. Professionals end up “promotions” more often than healthy. At SourceMatch, we start from one premise: by empowering our clients to access, hire, motivate and retain the best talent – our mission as a recruitment company, we can bridge the skills gap. Once hired, a company’s job regarding that new employee isn’t over. Motivating and retention are crucial and have their success roots in the recruitment process. Put in place the right recruitment strategy and retention is an entirely different ballgame.
There’s a saying that we believe in: “An organization’s ability to grow is only as good as its ability to attract, hire and retain the best talent, but also helps them develop professionally.” By helping them develop professionally, you are not only making sure that they stay motivated, but you can achieve your goals in a different time frame.
As Bogdan Negru, our Vice President of Solutions, mentioned in this interview, one of the aspects that helps a company thrive is continuous recruiting. Employers are challenged every time they find themselves in the situation to fill vacant positions now or yesterday. The temptation to get someone in the job ASAP is so great that many times hiring managers end up having anyone that can manage somehow. SourceMatch’ continuous hiring solution enables our clients to constantly look for candidates that match their culture, the traits that make candidates successful in their organization, have objectives that align or complement their own, and finally values that don’t contradict, but rather improve theirs.
Working with a recruitment partner can be a bliss – listen to this interview that the SourceMatch VP of Solutions – Bogdan Negru – had with Malcolm Lui, explaining how that happens.
We recruit with people in mind, but we do it by means of numbers. Recruiting project managers at SourceMatch have one main objective, and it is to provide valuable results to hiring managers they collaborate with. Their business is to understand statistics in such a manner that make the interaction profitable, thus creating a win-win-win situation. Why a triple win you may ask? Because recruiting needs to be a partnership between the hiring manager, the recruitment project manager and the candidate who is to be hired.
Think about how you would develop a general recruitment plan. You would have to review job descriptions. But before that, you would have to consider people finding strategies and use alternative labor pools. You would also have to have an image of how your company is perceived as a workplace from the outside. And as you would go about the process you would hit some roadblocks and you would have to adjust your goals. But these roadblocks you did not plan for could be a setback. This is where a recruitment company could come in handy as it would act as a buffer against the unexpected. Recruitment project managers would be helpful in determining your overall recruitment needs by having well-established business goals.
Or imagine you are on the lookout for a specific talent or that you are looking to hire a large number of skilled workers. How long will it take you, the hiring manager, to hire? How long does the recruitment process take for professional recruiters? Most companies out there would certainly know right off the bat that it takes on average less time to recruit when working with a partner specializing in recruitment. Time is only one of the factors you have to consider, the others include the variety of sources, recruiting research, and thorough process of vetting candidate’s before they even get to you. All of them matter when it comes to making a decision that affects an organization’s operations and growth plans. If you would have to estimate the true cost of hiring, we recommend looking at some statistics to put a value on the process.
You may come across reports saying that hundreds of talented people are going after the same job. And at the same time, you may come across conflicting recruitment statistics that highlight the difficulties of the skills gap and missing talent. Now let’s talk in concrete terms. If you take into consideration stats like “90% of job seekers say that it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency” or stats like “79% of job seekers say they are likely to use social media in their job search” you may look at those big numbers and jump to the conclusion that finding someone is easy. In reality, it’s not.
Yes, you have to recruit with numbers in mind, but truth to be told you have to have the right numbers and get your facts straight. According to Glassdoor, “on average, each corporate job offer attracts 250 resumes. Of those candidates, 4 to 6 will get called for an interview, and only one will get the job”. In other words, you will pay the cost in time and resources to go through 250 candidates/resumes plus the cost of expertise and tools, not to mention the opportunity costs. If you would outsource the recruiting process to a recruiting partner, they would use their resources in an optimal way. Recruiting agencies live and thrive by means of performance metrics. Recruiting project managers oversee the recruiting process by keeping track of recruiting funnel metrics such as time to source, time to interview, time to hire, etc. They are well aware that coming with better, faster, and more reliable results than their clients could internally is the only measurement of success, and eventually the reason why clients do business with them!
Are you missing anything? You might think that your organization’s internal resources and information are enough. Along with your recruiters, you provide candidates with details on compensation packages and benefits, details on what makes the company an attractive place to work, its mission, vision, and values. It’s easy to miss the fact that attracting talent isn’t the hardest part. Attracting, or rather finding the best talent within the desired timeframe is the most difficult part of the recruiting process. For instance, recruiting project managers at SourceMatch leverage research, intelligent algorithms, multiple compensation market data, and especially proactive measures to identify candidates that wouldn’t otherwise be visible.
Our main priority is to work with clients to enable them to reach candidates that are performing above peer professionals in the market. > Assisting the hiring manager and the client’s human resources team to build on their experience about what makes an employee successful over the long term; > Extend the reach of the client’s recruiters whether to identify hard to find talent or large numbers of candidates needed in a short timeframe; > By managing the whole recruiting process, and allowing the client’s human resources team to focus on talent onboarding, development, and overall experience. > We create 360-degree candidate presentation packages that include all the data needed for our client’s hiring managers, recruiters and human resources, to make informed hiring decisions.
At SourceMatch, we’ve developed and are constantly improving our own approach to recruitment: we design recruiting with people in mind, not just numbers. We pay attention to our clients’ needs by enabling them to pursue expansion into new countries, to grow in current markets, or to identify hard to find professionals. What qualifies us according to our clients is the speed of execution while tackling complex recruiting engagements, identifying strong professionals while dealing with their limited availability, or putting in place recruiting systems that serve as immediate help in expanding teams. Discover and explore our range of case studies to see how our teams of experts deliver recruiting solutions for a variety of needs.
The world is changing, and that’s a good thing. If you are not seeing it, you won’t be able to avoid it whether you like it or not. It is quite essential to develop a clear sense of what is happening around in the labor market and understand how these changes are affecting your Industry. Everything was planned, shaped for the benefit of economies and societies, and the implications of changes to work for individuals, for their livelihoods and for the youngest generations studying to enter the workforce down the line. Are we alarmed that this change will have a negative impact on the workforce? The truth is that many in the marketplace are wondering if new technologies will replace the human employee. This isn’t the first industrial revolution that creates worries about technological unemployment. It’s commonly accepted (and also debated) that the introduction of new technologies has displaced skilled workers but created demand for jobs. Hence the idea that innovative technology at a large scale does not replace human work but enhances it by increasing productivity and thus output levels.
However, there are complex feedback loops between new technology, jobs, and skills. New technologies can drive business growth, job creation and demand for specialist skills but they can also displace entire roles when certain tasks become obsolete or automated. At the same time, our belief is that these transformations, if managed wisely, will lead to a new age of good jobs, good work and improved quality of life for all.
First, let’s see how technology adoption can affect the Information and Communication industry according to The Future of Jobs Report 2018. A huge share of survey respondents from the industry indicated that, by 2022, their company was “likely” or “very likely” (on a 5-point scale) to have adopted new technology as part of its growth strategy.
Second, if we look at the barriers to adoption of new technologies, we can see the five biggest perceived barriers to the implementation of new technologies across the industry, as ranked by the share of survey respondents. The following graphic will show the obstacles that were selected by the survey respondents that were perceived as impediments to successful new technology adoption faced by their company.
Thirdly we have the expected impact of new technology adoption on the workforce. In the following graphic, you can see the percentages representing the share of survey respondents from the industry who expect their company to have adopted the stated measure(s) over the 2018–2022 period as part of their current growth strategy.
Adopting new technology comes packaged with promises but also with challenges. Yet, even if these technologies increase our productivity and improve our lives, their use will substitute some activities that are currently handled by people, a development that has sparked much public concern. At the same time, to leverage the benefits of new technology, workers will need to acquire skills enabling them to thrive in the workplace of the future and develop their ability to continuously learn and upskill throughout their lives.
Much has been said about the role of AI in recruitment. In the Infographic below we present the implications of AI for recruiters and organizations and for the second part, the benefits of AI for candidates in order to have a clear representation on how AI can positively affect your hiring strategy.
So, what do recruiters think about the implications of AI and how does it affect a recruiter’s work?
Statistics say that 56% of recruiters around the world say interviewing innovations due to AI are ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ important to the future of hiring. These can make a recruiter’s job easier by saving time and making its work more effectively. 39% of companies already use data to predict candidate success, while 60% of companies are planning on investing in AI-powered recruitment software, according to Harver’s report.
According to the same report, AI is most helpful in saving time (57%), removing human bias (43%), delivering best candidate matches (31%), saving money (30%).
According to a Yale University study, researchers asked 127 scientists to review a job application of identically qualified male and female students and found that the faculty members – both men and women – consistently scored a male candidate higher on a number of criteria such as competency and were more likely to hire the male. When it comes to the hiring bias, AI has proven to be a real success. For instance, tools can mask candidate gender from hiring managers and eliminate the bias. Bias can affect recruitment in your organization a lot. Dr. Pragya Agarwal mentions in a Forbes article that “Unconscious Bias can be a huge setback in creating a truly diverse and inclusive workplace”.
AI comes in hand in many ways and shapes, and we must be open to the change it brings and customize it to our needs in order to get the best out of it and hire right.
We present 4 key points about how your organization and recruiters can stand out with candidates:
1. Feedback. Offering constant feedback. Once you have received an application, as a recruiter there is only one thing candidates expect, and sometimes keeps them waiting forever. There are at least two scenarios: When candidates are not a good fit and recruiters forget about their resumes. From thousands of applications on the table or desktop software, the recruiter’s job is to find the perfect match for the position. But what about all the other candidates? Those who don’t make the cut and thus don’t move forward, also deserve an answer. When you’ve already had an interview with a candidate, they will be waiting for an answer. If you tell them that they should hear from you, and to wait for your call or email, but won’t give them a specific date but rather a vague timeframe (i.e. “in the next few weeks”). When nothing happens weeks later and the position might have been filled, the other candidate’s know nothing. They might be in the process for more than the job with your company, so that leaves them with uncertainty, especially when they have hopes! In both situations, the recruiter’s feedback and response are what shows your candidates that you treat them as people, and not as pieces of paper.
We encourage candidates to pay attention to those hiring companies that keep them posted even when they have to give bad news. That is a result of a good culture that focuses on people and the importance of long-term impact within and outside the organization.
2. Being a good listener. It will bring many benefits both to the job seeker and the client. When a recruiter listens to what the other parties have to say, he will understand what their needs are. It is said that good communication starts with listening. Communication is not just about how much we talk and what we say. When a recruiter starts working with a new hiring manager, she must not advise, diagnose, or assume anything before having understood their context, plans, and expectations. Use probing questions, quantify expectations as much as possible, verbalize objectives and ask for confirmation of the same understanding. A good listener will be able to reflect on what is being said and restate the message using the same or very similar words. For instance, this is especially useful to discuss the meaning of terms that might have slightly different definition in a client’s organization (i.e. sourced candidate as in prospective – “we have their resumes and they contain the basic qualifications”, or as in “we have their resumes, they qualify on paper, and we’ve talked to the candidates and they’ve already confirmed interest”). Be ready to invite the hiring manager to speak as much as they can about the position beyond the words of the job description by asking open-ended questions, listening, and asking additional probing questions when needed.
3. Marketing and sales skills. A professional recruiter will always know how to market and promote the services, knowledge, job opportunities and expertise in an effective way so that both clients and candidates are entirely satisfied with the process and outcome. Hence why understanding the key mechanism of marketing and sales is important: match a need with a solution where everyone has something to win. Recruiters must sharpen their selling skills if they hope to have any relevant results. A recruiter will stand out if she manages to develop a partnership with the client rather than just being a simple vendor.
Most recruiters will approach the recruiting process as merely transactional. They are provided with a job requisition, they post the job ad on known job boards, they search the database for matches and so on and so forth. In other words a simple equation with a few variables and a result. Instead of this shallow approach, recruiters can first start by asking one simple question: “what makes an employee successful in the client’s organization?” In other words: what are those traits that helped new hires to be productive, to grow int he role, to be fully committed and engaged? Same goes for vetting candidates. Recruiters should never settle for a resume or vague interview questions and answer. Validate their skills and experience through probing questions, assessments and add the depth of information that hiring managers need for sounds hiring decisions.
This is why whether talking about the client organization or candidates, there’s no one size fits all. Rather, recruiters need to craft their recruiting strategy and approach to candidates in a way that validates and compares both a role’s requirements and candidates’ complex profiles. Give context to each role by emphasizing the story that goes with it, including aspects such as vision, culture, challenges, opportunities, professional and personal development, etc.. Inspire people and bring emotion. That will help candidates you are interacting with, to think about all the facets of the position you are presenting to them, so the can decide whether they are a fit or not.
4. Relationship building. We must not forget that recruiting at its foundation is about being able to connect with others. Recruiters should be natural connectors of people. That is why a recruiter must be active on social media and in real life. They interact with many people and should easily connect with everyone. The easiest way to connect with people is by building trust, which only comes with speaking the truth and being straight forward, and non-confrontational. Don’t oversell your ability to recruit to your clients, and don’t oversell a job to your candidate’s. Keeping that balance helps to develop the right relationship on both ends of an outstanding recruitment process: a consultant for both clients and candidates.
In the end, it comes down to an organization’s not-so-hidden agenda when hiring people: “How do we develop the right recruiting strategy so that both candidates and ourselves win?” At SourceMatch, we take joy and satisfaction in assisting our clients with this process that creates value long term, not just short term!
This data provides a better understanding of the potential of new technologies. Adopting them will not only create disruption in the jobs market but will have the role to improve the quality of the existing work of human employees. By 2022, the enhancement of existing jobs through technology may free up workers from the majority of data processing and information gathering tasks.
At the same time, technology adoption might also affect more complex tasks such as reasoning and decision-making as augmentation becomes common over the years as a way to supplement and complement human labor. New technology, more importantly, can enable increased productivity across multiple industries. The way companies compete will be affected too, with more weight given to those able to leverage technologies as tools to complement and enhance human work, rather than competitive advantages focused on operations or the ability to attract talent.
There are three aspects you should focus on. These following infographics will show you how new technology adoption influences Financial Services and Investors Industry. Even more, these will show you the existing barriers created by new technology, and also portray the expected impact on the workforce.
Let’s start with a look at how technology adoption affects Financial Services & Investors Industry. A huge share of analysis of the respondents from the industry indicated that, by 2022, their company was “likely” or “very likely” (on a 5-point scale) to have adopted new technology as part of its growth strategy.
Secondly, when we check out the barriers to adoption of new technologies, the five biggest perceived barriers to the implementation of new technologies across the industry become very clear, as ranked by the share of survey respondents.
Thirdly, here’s the expected impact of new technology adoption on the workforce. In this last chart, you can see the percentages representing the opinion of survey respondents from the industry who expect their company to have adopted the stated measure(s) over the 2018–2022 period as part of their current growth strategy.
Technological progress presents a real challenge to existing business models and practices. Despite their disruptive potential, these dynamic changes will act as a pivot towards growth for those organizations that will dedicate resources to overcome them.
How does the independent workforce change the game in America’s economy nowadays? This powerful workforce is adding $715 billion annually to the economy through their freelance work, according to Freelancers Union.
The traditional 9-to-5 schedule has become a less common job schedule. Professionals have new opportunities, whether these concern work-life balance, flexibility, diversified project-based openings, access to an independent life, financial benefits and so on. Businesses in return, can access talent at the right time for the necessary time frame, and with the right skill sets.
The Infographic below reveals the 56.7 million freelancers in America, divided into 5 categories:
This type of work causes economic changes: where there’s demand, there should be more work. However, there’s a cultural and social shift as well. “With effects on social structures around civil rights, workforce participation, and even democracy itself, so too will this shift to a more independent workforce have major impacts on how Americans conceive of and organize their lives, their communities, and their economic power.” – says the independent study commissioned by Freelancers Union & Upwork.
The US labor market is changing fast. Talent platforms are reducing the costs of finding talent, and they’re not only providing more work to freelancers but also growing economies. By 2025, these online talent platforms could boost global GDP by $2.7 trillion annually, according to a report released by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI)
Millennials are the largest generation in the U.S. labor force that are driven by flexibility when it comes to when and where to work, and freelancing offers both. That is something we should take in consideration when looking for new talent.
This study from 2018, surveyed more than 6,000 U.S. workers and revealed new findings each year (starting in 2014) that showed us how much Americans spend on freelancing.
The dynamic between candidates and hiring managers Hiring someone is just like a dance. In a firm, out of necessity, someone requests a new position to be filled at which point a recruiter steps in and starts the hiring process. A team is formed and the one in need is appointed as the hiring manager, meaning that he is the ultimate decision maker, the one who must give the stamp of approval about who is hired. This is the moment the dance begins. Because the hiring manager is the key member of the recruitment team, the recruitment choreography is structured according to his needs and wants. He is the initiator of the position and he becomes the center point of the employee selection team. The human resources team will cater to his needs with every step of the hiring process.
What hiring managers look at Hiring managers are involved in every aspect of the employment process and they are the visionaries who set the tone (hopefully!) for the ideal candidate profile. It is an art to come up with the ideal candidate’s profile because one needs to know the ins and outs of the job. When a job order is created, the hiring manager gathers all the insight he has on a particular job and conveys that into specific details on not only what the job is like, but also what the ideal candidate would be like. At this moment, the recruiting team opens up for applications process. They select a group of well-suited candidates and give them the chance to show how they would synchronize their own combination of qualities and experience with the job’s requirements. The spotlight is on them and the hiring manager watches them perform with a scrutinizing eye.
First impression. The candidates put forth the best they have The candidates step on the stage. Some are shy and some are bold and usually, all of them are prepared as they know that their future depends on their performance. They showcase their talents on that stage, but little do they know that their performance is watched before they start dancing. You see, the hiring manager is smart and wants to know how the candidate moves in his natural environment, in his day to day life. So, he does a background check. This involves every single digital record he can find from Facebook to public information. He might even ask the receptionist what kind of a first impression the candidate gave. You might find this to be quite sneaky but in the end, it’s the smart move to make. The hiring manager always acts in the best interest of the company.
An in-depth look – interviewing At this point, the candidates made their first move before the hiring manager had the chance to demonstrate who they are and what they can do. And if the way they danced so far screamed “likable” they are validated for the next step in the hiring process: the interview. Up to this point, nonverbal communication was key. But from now on words are gold. At this stage, the candidates move forward with their words. If they master small talk, they are hired. You might be tempted to think that their technical skills are the most important, but, no. You see, they wouldn’t have gotten the chance to perform in front of the hiring manager if they wouldn’t have had the technical skills beforehand. By this point, the focus is on the interaction. The hiring manager wants to see if the candidate would be a fit for the job. By this, we mean that he needs to get the feeling that if he would make the hire, the new employee would not disrupt the job workflow. He will step in and through well-orchestrated questions, he himself will “dance” with the candidate in order to understand the candidate’s skills, attitudes, and perseverance.
The role that intuition plays after an interview Now the stage is empty, but emotions run high. The candidates try to figure out what they did wrong and the hiring manager is left alone with his most trusted friend, his gut instinct. If he makes a good hiring decision, he will be fine with it but he wants to make the best choice so he will sleep on it. The hiring manager uses the knowledge he gathered along his years of working in a certain field and decides based on the way he feels about each candidate. Although his decision will be based on more of an implicit thinking pattern it will be a well-motivated one. He will assign the role to the best candidate from a technical perspective, as well as from the way he performed regarding his interpersonal skills.
Why SourceMatch? Being in the recruiting business for more than twenty years, SourceMatch has an in-depth knowledge of the hiring process. We know every single building block pertaining to recruiting. We can assist with identifying the hiring needs, how to create job descriptions and how to post and promote these jobs. When it comes to screening candidates, SourceMatch has the best compliment ever: clients keep coming back for more. If it’s challenging to find and reach candidates at the right time and place to go through your hiring process, you are not alone! Most companies have difficulty in filling jobs, especially because of the skills gap. SourceMatch has a hiring choreography tailored to your needs. Let’s dance!
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