Shyamal Majumdar: From renting talent to Snap spectacles

The new year will see huge changes in the way companies recruit

Recruitment consultants (they prefer to be called talent leaders these days) have drawn up their road map for the new year. While some of these resolutions are old wine in a new bottle, there are a few interesting ones as well.
 
Until recently, it was common for candidates to be nervous about asking potential employers for flexible work arrangements. The year 2017 would see more and more employers offering flexibility as part of their employment package upfront. The options would be many — from occasional telecommuting to staggered working hours and more. Recruiters would be thinking of ways to embrace the new “gig economy” by using technology to streamline processes and speed up placements. It has already started happening; for example, by definition, people earning money through companies such as Uber and Ola are not themselves employees of those companies. In addition, more companies than ever are choosing to “rent” rather than hire talent, even at senior levels.

 
There will also be huge changes in the way people are recruited — and we are not talking about interviews via teleconferencing here. A trend has been set by Citi, which is using things like Snap Spectacles — the sunglasses made by Snapchat’s parent company with miniature cameras used to record video — to show candidates what life at Citi may look like. It allows candidates to get a bird’s eye view of new interactions and follow employees around as they do their job. The first set of videos, according to Citi, showcases a “day in the life” of a junior employee, like a banking analyst in London or a tech intern in New York.

 

While this might take some time to come to India, companies will have to find increasingly creative ways to rebrand in an effort to become desirable workplaces for bright college graduates.
 
When LinkedIn and online job applications first began to gain traction, they were seen as supplements to the traditional paper resume and in-person interview. Today, the world of recruiting has gone nearly 100-per cent digital already, but will see the next level now. Innovative tools that use social media, big data and other technologies to give tremendous insight into individual job seekers will be the primary screening method.

 
This will also be a year when recruiters will quickly move to a mobile-first strategy, as applications are increasingly being received and delivered on smartphones and instant messaging, rather than on email.
 
Companies will continue to look for ways to improve their employee branding, as savvy candidates will evaluate company brands before applying to or accepting a job, much in the same way they evaluate consumer brands when shopping — they will be researching you as much as you are researching them, so companies have to make their websites a strong tool for engaging talent. For this, big data, which has so far been applied to customers to help businesses make better strategic decisions, will now extend to candidate information so that recruiters can quickly and easily locate the best people for the job. For example, how do you use social data to identify people, who are more likely to be open to new opportunities? Or, how do you better assess whether a candidate will fit the right skill set for a role? All these would be an improvement over the current practice of focusing data analysis only on the source of a hire and how long it takes to hire someone.

 
Experts call it the introduction of design thinking in recruitment practices. Simply described, design thinking means focusing on the person and the experience, not the process. According to a Deloitte survey, applying design thinking to the work experience compels HR to ask: “What does a great employee experience look like from end to end? How can we facilitate collaboration and learning in everything we do? How can we take advantage of location-aware mobile devices to make people more productive?
 
But not everything can change, as some of the old systems will have to continue simply because they are too good to let go of. For example, while companies will begin to rely more heavily on automation and digitisation, especially at the pre-screening phase, there is no substitute for a human touch in the recruitment process. The more quality relationships recruiters can foster, the greater their chance of success in the new year.