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.

Here’s what will define Talent Acquisition (TA) in the coming year, and how your team can win in the 365 days ahead.

2018 was defined by deep, recruiting-AI integrations, including the first AI native to an applicant tracking system (ATS) in the form of SmartRecruiters’ SmartAssistant, and a data security revolution heralded by the general data privacy regulations (GDPR) in Europe, as well as similar legislation around the world.

No story ever ended neatly at the stroke of midnight on December 31st. We will continue to see AI take root, and data security will remain top of mind. Yet, as a new year begins, one can’t help but look back at the last journey around the sun to identify the lessons that will prepare TA for the next 365 days.

To understand better the trends and challenges of 2019, we sat down with CEO and founder of SmartRecruiters, Jerome Ternynck, to learn how a new ‘marketing’ outlook shaped by a laser-focus on candidate experience, and a mastery of tech, will get TA into the boardroom this year.

Five Predictions for Talent Acquisition in 2019

3 min 26 sec video

1) Recruitment marketing or bust…

“Source candidates like an outbound marketer. End-to-end recruitment marketing, branding, and candidate relationship management systems (CRM) with consumer-class candidate experience throughout — Recruiters need to leverage the whole gamut by proactively sourcing, building talent pools, and nurturing relationships in order to compete for top talent in today’s candidate-driven market.”

2) Diversity and inclusion are ‘non-negotiables’…

“If you don’t have a strong D&I strategy (there are many ways for it to be simple but effective), you’re losing the long-term talent game.”

3) TA is boardroom-ready…

“We’ve always known that hiring success = business success, now it’s time to show the world. This is how we’re going to do it: Today’s leading TA Suites provide you with all the data and insights you need to drive hiring success and, by extension, business outcomes. A simple hiring success dashboard with net hiring score, velocity, and budget metrics is easy for a boardroom to grasp. It’s no longer about faster and cheaper — it’s all about the value created! We tried it, our customers adopted, and it works.”

4) Think ‘global’, act ‘local’…

“With more and more companies evolving towards distributed workforce models, often spanning across 3-5 offices/countries, your TA strategy needs to be global, yet your tools and processes need to be local. Think detailed configurability within an overarching collaborative platform as the staple ingredients for a successful recruiting strategy.”

5) Digital savvy is the ultimate differentiator…

“Tech, tech, and more tech. From AI and blockchain to chatbots and scheduling, it’s all happening online. These digital solutions have made it possible for recruiting to deliver results to the boardroom. Growth strategy will increasingly depend on tech stacks, and the partnership between vendors and customers will be key to driving business growth.

Necessity breeds invention, and that’s what we’ve seen with TA over the last decade. As the talent economy becomes more competitive, tech rises to the challenge to support recruiters and bring hiring to the next level.”

2017 wraps up with the possibilities of big data still on the horizon of HR, technology firmly integrated in day to day operations of Talent Acquisition, and candidates in the position of power when it comes to hiring.

We coast into 2018 with unemployment in the US reaching a 17 year low at 4.1 percent. These numbers mean recruiters and talent acquisition leaders have to be especially agile to get the best candidates. TA teams approached this challenge with competitive gusto, taking advantage of time-saving tech as well as leveraging remote and flexible working options to attract top candidates.

We scrubbed the latest report from Bounty Jobs to bring you top takeaways for 2017 so you can enter 2018 in the know and ready to hire.

1. In the Ocean of big data before us, most TA teams have only dipped a toe.

In 2017 we have finally reached a point where most organizations make use of big data with at least the most basic tracking metrics of the quantity of hires, the speed of hire, and type of hire.

Yet, the rich depths of predictive analytics have yet to be plummeted. According to an outmatch survey of 176 professionals in the US only 35 percent of TA teams are using predictive analytics in their hiring process.

95 percent of that same survey acknowledged that they believe predictive analytics would be helpful in their hiring process and plan to take advantage of big data in the coming year to predict hiring needs, boost employee retention and loyalty, and develop an effective hiring blueprint.

2. Most effective TA teams invest in technology.

The Hackett Group’s recently released benchmark analysis that finds the most effective HR teams invest the heft of their budget in cloud based tech. These TA organizations function with 30 percent less staff than the average HR organizations while being more effective and spending 25 percent less.

3. Remote work options boosts employee retention.

Cafes, coworking spaces or even your couch at home – that’s the new office. 20 to 25 percent of workers already telecommute in some way, says the University of Alabama, and 90 percent of workers have ‘working remotely’ on their wish list. Employers who are dubious of these new fangled flexible work ideas should know The State of Remote Work report for 2017 shows companies who support remote work have a 25 percent lower employer turnover.

4. Majority of TA and workers open to the gig economy

The survey of 1000 recruiters shows the TA community ready to embrace the opportunities the Gig economy presents with 78 percent indicating a friendly view towards this new method of work. 23 million Americans now participate as on demand freelancers in companies like AirBnB and Uber.

It’s not just millenials who are amenable to the gig economy. Manpowergroup found 94 percent of workers are open to non-traditional work arrangements, including 80 percent of baby boomers ages 50 to 65.

5. One in five jobs sent to third-party agency.

20 percent of all jobs are now being sent to recruiting agencies. Employers opt for this pricier method for essential and time sensitive positions citing the following reasons:

1. Tight labor pool 60%
2. Competitive industry  55%
3. Tight timeline 45%
4. Strapped recruiting team 36%
5. Confidential role 30%
6. Lack of specialty on in-house team 22%

Surprisingly, a little less than 21 percent of companies track ROI from their use of a recruitment agency. However, 60 percent plan to do better with tracking to really learn what they are gaining from specialized agencies.

6. Candidates hold the cards when it comes to hiring.

Candidates have had a great year! Low unemployment rate, consistent salary growth for the last five years, and increases in incentive perks – including 61 percent of employers offering relocation compensation and an increase of 2.3 percent from 2016 in telework and remote work options – all means that top talent has a pick of jobs and employers need to get strategic to win over their top applicants.