Article: Candidate Sourcing 2018 – Tracking the Trends

Talent Acquisition

Candidate Sourcing 2018 – Tracking the Trends

With big players exploring new avenues, we can expect sourcing to take a sweepingly different shape in the very near future.
Candidate Sourcing 2018 – Tracking the Trends

2017 was an exciting year in the recruitment industry, with staffing companies worldwide targeting their focus towards integrating AI and automation solutions, improving workplace diversity and setting a benchmark for candidate experience in recruiting. But what brought us here isn’t enough to take us further, considering the trends that set off in the last two years. 

Sourcing is undoubtedly the most effective means of finding the right candidate. With the key findings of Mettl’s SOTA 2018 report predicting a talent shortage in Unique Skill Requirement by 58% and Mid to Senior-Level positions by 73%, we need to be adequately prepared to drift through the changes and challenges 2018 will bring in terms of candidate sourcing. 

New sourcing trends are setting off, and existing strategies will need to be reassessed.

A radical advancement in the job search industry is that Facebook and Google have also stepped into the recruitment scene. Many companies have already set up their company pages and are posting jobs, which attracts a fair bit of candidates, but not so much as LinkedIn. But with FB launching a Jobs tab with an Apply Now button (which is in testing), candidates can apply for jobs directly within FB. It’s only likely that users will find FB more relevant than LinkedIn, as most of them would be spending more time on FB. 

On the other hand, with Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn, we can expect added features within the MS Office environment, which would allow recruiters searching a JD within the MS Office environment to get any connections of suggested/prospective candidates with any existing employee within the company. The MS Office Bot will also continue extracting candidate profiles for active job vacancies when the recruiter is not active or is logged out, so the recruiter can review those profiles when he/she logs back in. The Bot may also initiate automated conversations with the candidate to assess whether those candidates are interested.

Now, let’s take Google’s latest venture, Cloud Jobs API (launched in Nov 2016), a machine learning service that aims to significantly enhance the candidate sourcing process. Cloud Jobs API comprehends the nuances of job-related keywords and maps to jobseekers’ preferences. I am not going into the details of machine learning’s role in Cloud Jobs API, but in short, it involves detection of occupations and skillsets in jobseekers’ queries, extracting the skillsets from job postings and mapping these relational models, which would result in both, jobseekers finding job postings that match their requirements as well as recruiters getting the most relevant candidate profiles for processing. 

What about the classic Indian job boards that have gotten us this far?

There are over a hundred job boards in India, including several new, industry-specific sourcing engines like Hacker Earth, Glider.ai, etc. and innovative startups like Co-Cubes and Babajobs, which haven’t yet reached the popularity level of Naukri, Monster, Indeed, Shine, Timesjobs, etc. But with big players exploring new avenues, we can expect sourcing to take a sweepingly different shape in the very near future. 

Specifically, I couldn’t find any announcements pertaining to the future evolution of Indian job boards; it’s only fair to assume they are coming up with innovative features to improve their engines and contribute to improving the overall recruitment process, both from the recruiter’s and the candidate’s perspective. At this rate of competition, and with finding the right candidate becoming increasingly hard today, these job sites will have to come up with interesting, new features that would bring significant improvements to sourcing and recruitment and thus prevent the existing trends and means from fading away.  

Quick changes for better sourcing;

  • Make the best use of the available AI and Machine learning based tools for sourcing and screening.

  • Start using community boards and put an effort to extend your reach on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

  • Monitor Glassdoor and other review sites for reviews of your company; comment on bad reviews to clarify any misunderstandings – though this won’t directly affect candidate sourcing, it will surely help to gather goodwill and jobseekers’ trust.

  • Use plenty of job boards and juggle between them, based on industry-specific requirements; don’t hesitate to explore start-ups and emerging job boards.

  • Stay tuned for more announcements from Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn and for innovations existing job boards may bring to the table.

 

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Topics: Talent Acquisition, #Hiring, #Jobs

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