As offices prepare to welcome the first generation of true ‘digital natives’ there are more currents below the surface shaping the future of HR.

With unemployment at a 49 year low in the US, salary budgets are projected to increase by an average of 3.2 percent, up from 3.1 percent last year. Employers are feeling the growing labor shortage, which saw 6.9 million unfilled jobs last year, a number that is predicted to grow in 2019, with the most affected industries being education/health services and professional/business services.

All this as the first majority Gen Z university class dons their caps and gowns this Spring, and prepares to enter the workforce. According to recent LinkedIn research, the fastest growing fields of entry for these grads are web designer (for women) and Software tester (for men). However, it isn’t just fresh face employees making their mark on the workforce, some 10 thousand baby boomers turn 65 every day, and as a result, half of the 11.4 million jobs projected to be created over the next seven years will be filled by people over the age of 55.  

As the face of the labor market changes, so does the infrastructure that supports it. In the last five years, HR technology has seen a proliferation of startups, big consolidations, and a race for innovation. At the same time, new legislation, like the General Data Protection Regulations in Europe, brings data security to the forefront; and workers movements like #metoo, educator strikes, and Uber protests raise questions about what the future of work should look like.

In the midst of all this recruiters and HR are working harder than ever. A recent Monster survey found 62 percent of recruiters say their jobs are more difficult than the previous year, and 67 percent say the difficulty exceeds that of five years ago. So, let’s break down these changes step by step to understand the trends taking root in the latter half of 2019.

1. The Beginning of Gen Z Takeover

Every employer has now taken into the fold, the once enigmatic, millennial cohort. In fact, the generation born between 1981 and 1996, is the biggest portion of the labor force today. Yet, time marches on, and employers must now welcome a new crop to the workforce… with their own special quirks.

Gen Z, the first generation of true ‘digital natives’ (those born between 1997 and 2016) are expected to represent at least 40 percent of all consumers by the year 2020, potentially influencing $166 – $333 billion of annual family spending.

Some of the defining characteristics of Gen Z include: entrepreneurial, less money-driven, and honesty seeking. Read the full list here!

2. Remote Work Is the New Norm

More and more employees are enjoying remote work with increased productivity. As a matter of fact, an almost two year Stanford study revealed a remarkable boost in productivity among telecommuters in a test group that is equivalent to full day work.

The report found that remote employees tend to put in a full day of work and even more since they don’t have to struggle with a daily commute only to leave earlier for personal errands or be late for work.

Furthermore, employee attrition was reduced by about half, saving the test group around $1,900 per employee in yearly retention costs. Not only that, but operating costs were also reduced by at least $1,400 per worker since they were not using company facilities like water and power and taking up office space.

3. Digital and Consumer-Grade HR

Employees, as well as employers, will continue to demand user-friendly workplace tech. This will push HR solutions to be fully cloud-based, mobile-enabled, open to APIs and meticulously designed with the end user in mind. Furthermore, HR tech and data will be accessed and shared with the ability to integrate across various platforms while connecting internal business silos.

Now there are technologies for every step of the employee lifecycle from candidate relationship management, to onboarding, to time/attendance tracking keeping HR and Talent Acquisition engaged with their workers from start to finish.

Says Bob Melk, Chief Commercial Officer, Monster: “For recruiting to be effective in 2018 and beyond, it must go beyond traditional methods. [There’s a] need for an integrated recruitment strategy spanning the entire candidate lifecycle. A multi-solution approach – combining marketing, digital, and analytics – is critical in moving recruitment stress to recruitment success.”

4. Employers Get Competitive About Benefits

This competitive hiring landscape can be particularly challenging for startups and small business without the name recognition of larger companies.

These fledgling businesses will need to get creative with the benefits they offer, such as lifestyle spending accounts, flexible work arrangements, student loan support, and health/wellness programs. Elastic and Salesforce not only offer generous vacation packages, they also pay their employees to volunteer for the causes they are passionate about. Netflix, on the other hand, extends paid parental leave to salaried employees so parents of any gender can take a year off with full pay following the birth or adoption of a child.

5. Delivering Against Diversity And Inclusion Initiatives Continues

With the unemployment rate expected to continue its decline, employers need to expand the talent pool. That means building pipelines for underrepresented and untraditional candidates.

Daniel Zhao, a senior data scientist at Glassdoor, notes changes in the tech sector saying to CBS News “We’ve heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that employers are starting to reduce qualifications or look for nontraditional workers. They might reduce qualifications from a master’s to a bachelor’s degree, or they might start an apprenticeship.”

As we move into 2020 there will be more changes to come! Let us know what you think is on the horizon @smartrecruiters #HiringSuccess.

Build a robust talent pipeline for these competitive reqs with takeaways from LinkedIn’s 2018 report.

Every professional should enter 2019 with a comprehensive knowledge of their industry landscape. For recruiters, this means understanding the labor trends that will affect their talent pipeline.

Though a technical skills gap is evident, with the demand for check jobs increasing 14x from 2012 to 2016. What the recruiting industry has seen is no simple trend of everyone exclusively needing digital skills. In fact, the biggest skills gap lies in oral communication — ahead of social media, design, and web development — according to LinkedIn’s 2018 U.S. Emerging Jobs Report.

Skill sets, specialized by industry, are no longer prominent; rather, businesses seek to round out their team’s capabilities with a mix of hard and soft skills. For example, two-thirds of the most recruited jobs in tech are sales-based, while the same number of most recruited jobs in non-profit organizations are tech-based.

To better understand the nuances of the ever-evolving talent economy, and prepare recruiters for 2019, we bring you the highlights of The 33 Most Recruited Roles of 2018. Learn which roles are most competitive, and the specific methods for beating out the competition for top talent.

Take a look at the most recruited jobs overall.

1) DevOps Engineer

DevOps Engineer is the most recruited position of 2018. When sourcing candidates, it’s good to keep in mind that this newly popular role is a blanket term for a wide range of responsibilities that may vary between companies. LinkedIn suggests searching “adjacent terms” like “Site Reliability Engineer”.

2) Enterprise Account Executive

Also, know as AEs, these are the folks who will ensure your top customers are happy. Hot cities for these candidates include San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Recruiters should also check out Austin, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C., where — according to the LinkedIn Talent Insights — supply is high and demand is much lower.

3) Front-End Engineer

The demand for top coders who can make a company’s website interactive and visually appealing reflects the overall shift from brick-and-mortar to virtual storefronts. What business doesn’t have an online presence in this day and age?

LinkedIn advises recruiters to look towards Beijing for applicants, a city with a similar supply of qualified candidates as San Francisco, but far less demand.

Now let’s view the most recruited roles by industry…

Technology

• Enterprise Account Executive
• DevOps Engineer
• Sales Development Rep

Note two of three “tech” jobs are actual sales roles, proving soft skills are still relevant.

Finance

• Data Scientist
• Senior Software Engineer
• Senior Tax Associate

Work-life balance is the primary concern for data scientists. Recruiters who highlight this as a tenant of their company culture are more likely to snag the top candidates.

Retail

• Software Engineer
• Senior Financial Analyst
• Senior Brand Manager

Software engineer is not only the most recruited role for retail, it’s now the third most common role in the industry (up five positions since 2013).

Professional Services

• Senior Software Engineer
• Data Scientist
• Front-End Developer

Many data scientists come from a research background, so consider searching for related terms to source candidates who could transition to data scientist roles.

Education/government/nonprofits

• Software Engineer
• Business Analyst
• System Administrator

System administrators prioritize work-life balance, salary, and security in their job search, so be sure recruiters and hiring managers highlight these benefits when talking to candidates.

…And across functions.

Engineering

• DevOps Engineer
• Front-End Engineer
• Cloud Architect

Software engineers as a whole apply to jobs at a rate 13 percent lower than the general population, proactively recruiting these candidates is the most effective strategy to hire them before you need them—or a competitor does.

Sales

• Enterprise Account Executive
• Sales Development Representative
• Senior Sales Engineer

Company culture and mission are matter most to AEs, so emphasize the company’s story and work-dynamic when talking to these candidates.

Operations

• Senior Quantity Surveyor
• Delivery Manager
• Supply Director

The Bengaluru and Chennai areas of India, as well as London, tend to have the highest supply of delivery managers — be sure to scour these locations for qualified applicants.

Marketing

• Digital Marketing Manager
• Product Marketing Manager
• Senior Brand Manager

Product marketing managers are in high demand in San Francisco’s tech economy. However, supply is also high in Paris, Shangai, and Singapore, so consider extending your sourcing and recruiting efforts in these untapped geographies as well.

HR

• Technical Recruiter
• Recruiting Coordinator
• HR Business Partner

Sourcing technical recruiters straight out of university has become popular, and there’s a wide range of majors that can be relevant. LinkedIn found that technical recruiters come from a number of disciplines, including HR management, business administration, computer science, marketing, and psychology.

The top 3 recruiting strategy pointers.

1)

Source nontraditional candidates.

Consider partnering with coding boot camps, technical colleges, and vocational schools to fill those open reqs.

Companies should also consider expanding their workforce to include non-traditional options like remote workers or freelancers. Remote workers widen your talent pool and are proven to be just as productive as their in-office counterparts. Freelancers are valuable for project-based work and typically cost less than a full-time employee. It’s predicted that by 2027 50 percent of all workers in the U.S. will be freelnace, so building a network of contractors now could set a company up for future success

2)

Assess skills, not pedigree.

Make sure the skills called out in your job advertisement are relevant. Stick to essentials and avoid cliches. If your job description has 40 skills and includes the phrase ‘fast-paced environment’, start again.

Once the requisite job skills are defined, decide how to evaluate. The market for tech-based assessment is booming, and businesses that incorporate tech-based assessment tools into their hiring process tend to reduce bias.

3)

Upskill existing employees.

Upskilling employees, rather than relying exclusively on outside hires, is an increasingly popular solution to the talent shortage facing many employers today. Investing in learning and development (L&D) programs keep a company’s employees relevant while boosting employer brand. In fact, “career growth” is one of the top three reasons candidates accept an offer.

Telecommunications giant AT&T recently invested $1 billion into reskilling their 250,000 employees with great success – the workers who participate in the program are now twice as likely to get a new role within the company, and 4 times more likely to receive a promotion.

Their program includes an online portal that showcases all 3,000 roles at the company, complete with growth projection, salary expectations, skill requirements, a library of relevant classes and training demos, and contacts within the company to learn more. AT&T creates many of their courses in-house, but also partners with educational platforms and institutions to provide additional educational resources for employees.

Advice from AT&T regarding L&D programs is threefold: frame upskilling as a practical expenditure that will save time and money in the long run, transparency is key, and constantly get feedback.

Closing thoughts.

The key to acquiring top talent is playing the long game and looking to the future. Snap solutions can hold a business over while implementing the following programs, but they aren’t permanent fixes.

In today’s candidate-driven market recruiters all too often experience the pressure to make great hires without adequate support and resources. Thankfully, there are ways that recruiters can lighten the load. TA teams who learn to automate effectively, make the most of their data, and double down on employer brand will find themselves in the best position to attract quality talent to drive business.

Challenges are also opportunities, according to LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue, who reminds us that, “Whenever companies are faced with that changing pressure, they look for solutions. That’s a great driving force,” he says, “it’s the energy behind HR innovation.”

Read the full report here!

HR and recruiting are about to experience a perfect storm – in a good way – learn how the labor shortage, tech innovation, and big investment are about to disrupt everything!

A healthy environmental ecosystem is the product of careful balance. Often, these schemes seem immutable, but even the most ancient can be transformed by the simple tipping of the scales. The same can be said for the HR ecosystem. Mutually reinforced patterns of behavior scaled up over years can be totally disrupted in a new wave of economic pressures, and we are about to experience three: a labor shortage, new technology, and major investment.

In the same way that a foreign seed can wipe out a native plant species or a flood can give rise to a new population of moss, we will soon see how Recruiting will adapt to these changing environs. Not only that, but we will witness how the C-suite and leadership view of HR – as a function – changes.

To understand better the evolving industry we talk to Franz Gilbert, Vice President, Solution Provider Programs at Bersin, Deloitte Consulting LLP.  An industry analyst with over 20 years of experience, Franz has seen how the market reacts when the pendulum swings. Here’s what he has to say about how the dust will settle… and whether ‘balance’ can be restored.

Can you give us your “state of the union” for HR Technology?

There are amazing things going on in the industry. It’s a great time to be in HR and HR technology specifically, and there are three simultaneous drivers behind this:

• Employees recognized as critical…
• Tech is ready…
• Investment is there…

One, from a business standpoint, the role of the employee is finally being recognized as critical to operations. Investors are seeing that better HR organizations tend to do better business. So now the people with the capitol want to vet companies from an employee management perspective, and – with the help of sustainable guidelines like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) – companies are now reporting on turnover, training hours per employee, retention, pay equity, and diversity.

The global labor scarcity has played into the elevation of the employee status. In the United States specifically, there are 7.1 million open jobs right now while only 5.9 million people remain unemployed. That’s a 20 percent gap from a demand perspective which makes retaining employees incredibly important.

Second, on the technology side, the advent of cloud computing, which has made HR tech easier to do. HR is basically a tremendous pile of data, and there’s now the possibility to process it for innovative solutions to hiring pain points like sourcing outside hires, surfacing internal talent, and campaigning to passive candidates.

Third, we’re now seeing real investment in HR Technology companies. There’s more private equity and venture capital money in the market than ever before. The normal runway used to be around $500k in a year, but in the last 90 days, we’ve seen $256 million put into rounds, according to the public data. So, in a three month period, we’re doing what companies historically did in a year and a half to two years.

This infusion of capital is attracting amazing talent to HR tech. We already had good talent, but now you’re seeing people come into the industry with backgrounds in artificial intelligence (AI) and psychology from institutions like MIT and Harvard. It’s a great time for the market, and we’re already starting to seeing an explosion of smart solutions.

With the proliferation of point solutions are all-in-one platforms history?

The pendulum is swinging back from point solutions, and I think employee experience is going to be the great unifier. The challenge for the next three years will be bringing together all these technologies into a navigable interface.  I predict a great deal of collaboration behind the scenes, in terms of APIs, will have to take place, and perhaps some user interfaces will come to the market that just provide a skin for other applications. Of course, there will be some straightforward consolidation and acquisitions as well.

What are your predictions for 2019 for the HR tech industry?

• AI

AI has been the buzzword for the last couple years, but just now it’s coming into play as part of the feature suite of HR. I’m excited to see what happens now that the shiny foil is off this tech and we’re really going to see it in action.

• Candidate and employee experience

Another great trend I’m seeing is a return to driving good HR that puts employee experience at the center. This focus on making work great for workers is going to force the next wave of innovation.

• Upskilling

Workforce planning and workforce analytics will also play a huge role in 2019. As the labor shortages continue to grow, companies are being forced to know their employees better – their skills, their competencies, their goals, etc. Taxonomies like titles and hierarchy will become less relevant. It will become a question of ‘what can you do?’.