Recruiting and HR Trends to Watch for in 2012

What will the 2012 job market look like? And how will it affect YOUR business? As 2011 winds down, we asked our panel to share some of their top predictions for corporate recruiting and hiring next year.

What are your predictions for recruiting and hiring trends in 2012?

Keith Cline, Principal, Dissero

If the fourth quarter is an indication of things to come in 2012, I predict:

* Investment activity will continue at the same pace as 2011, and thus, finding top tier talent will be a challenge. The market will remain very competitive − especially in Boston, New York City, and San Francisco.

* The lack of engineering talent will continue to be a major problem for both large and small companies.

* Here’s some areas of domain experience that will be in high demand throughout 2012:  consumer web, mobile, and big data.

Jessica Ray, Recruiting Analyst, OpenView Venture Partners

In 2012, organizations and candidates will continue to develop new ways to communicate with each other using social media and technology.  LinkedIn will remain the prominent leader in how organizations source passive candidates; however, by the end of the year, we will see candidate response rates dropping due to an overload of messages from recruiters.  As a result, successful recruiters will begin to use more traditional tactics − like cold calling − once again.

Video interviewing and tools that support video resume submissions will gain major prominence before the end of the year.   The emergence of video resumes, online “hire me” campaigns and websites will expand across a variety of positions, beyond the most recent pool of candidates vying for social media or marketing positions.

As the challenge to recruit top talent across the country and the world continues, companies will begin to explore more remote work arrangements for traditional office-based positions.  Employees and candidates will be expecting the opportunity to have more flexible working arrangements as the popularity increases and competition for top talent heats up.

The TribeHR team

People are coming to realize that the best companies are built using the best talent, so we think we’re going to see a lot more competitive recruiting, especially from smaller businesses.

In the past, the most successful recruiters have been people who use their resources most effectively and leverage technology to their advantage. We should see more of this moving forward, as more and more companies try to establish a brand presence by promoting their corporate culture, tap into social media channels, make better use of video, and reach out to the growing population of smartphone owners.

Also, look for more of an emphasis on numbers, as companies try to optimize their recruiting efforts. We’ll be seeing increased development opportunities and market uptake for B2B recruiting tools that track conversion rates, help with marketing and email automations, enable remarketing, support inbound marketing efforts, and so forth. Data is money.

Mel Kleiman, Founder and President, Humetrics

* It will be easy to hire employees in 2012, but it will continue to be a real challenge to hire high performers.

* Unemployment will stay high as an overall number, but there will be two wars going on: on one hand, there will be a war for talents. On the other hand, there will be a war for jobs.

* Because of the unsettled market place, people will talk about leaving their jobs for new opportunities, but they will be hard to attract.

* Automation that makes it easy to apply will also keep making it easy for the wrong people to apply. These means it is going to be harder to find the sharper needles because the haystack has gotten so big.

* More than ever, those “A” players are going to be looking for the following, and those companies that can provide these five things are going to win the war for talent:

• Great managers
• Growth opportunities
• Challenging work
• Family friendly environment
• A culture of recognition.

Brad Stadler, Partner, Heidrick & Struggles

The technology job market should continue to be strong in 2012.  There are many exciting early stage, disruptive companies that have had strong growth in 2011 and are forecasting continued growth in 2012.  Further, there have been a number of significant public offerings and acquisitions which will stimulate more investment.

I believe that much of the demand will be for cloud-based business or those in the internet domain.  Employers will look for professionals that are progressive in their thinking and can quickly adapt to a changing market.  Now, more than ever, prospective employers will focus on aptitude and creativity as opposed to experience.

Kris Dunn, The HR Capitalist

Turnover is up, but cost-per-hire stays flat. While a recovering economy theoretically makes talent harder to get (more jobs), talent also becomes more willing to leave the sure thing they have for the unknown as the economy picks up.

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