Here we are! Back from holidays, back in the office, back to pushing recruiting innovation forward. At least that’s our goal for 2015. I know, you will already have read a lot of articles about the upcoming trends of this year - but still you have not read ours I am sure you will not have heard about eye tracking or voice analysis for HR, right? Here is our personal post on what trends HR won’t be able to avoid this year! Enjoy!

1. Big Data: Tools, Dashboards, manageable metrics

Yes, you cannot get rid of big data! On the contrary! A lot of HR managers and decision makers are still faced with the challenge of the data they have collected throughout the years.

What to do with this data? This lack of action-taking will diminish as soon as simple tools and dashboards take control over recruiting campaigns and HR management. By breaking your HR strategy down into manageable metrics, you will be able to fully use your data.

2. War for Talent

As expected, it will still be crucial to find highly qualified employees for niche positions. Sure, the skills shortage may depend on the sector and the region (companies located in the middle of nowhere will have more trouble finding talent than companies located in New York City), but the so-called “war for talent” will grow, the need to recruit “star performers” will increase and force companies to take action! This applies to retention measures to keep good employees from leaving, but also to training and staff development to build expertise within the company.

In some sectors, it will become a necessity to forget about the “perfect candidate” and look for talent from neighbouring areas that require similar skills.

Also, international recruiting is going to increase. (We have crafted a white paper about how to recruit internationally. Have a look here.)

3. HR Marketing & Recruiting Processes

Winning the competition for talent is more or less directly linked to how attractive your company is to the candidate’s eyes, including the way your recruiting processes are designed. Please bear in mind: candidates want a fast, easy and fair process. The magic solution here is a “unique candidate experience”. It is not enough to just have a fancy Facebook page or a cool employer branding video.

4. Technology + HR = powerful couple?

Modern technology is part of our daily private and professional life. No escape is possible! We have to deal with this. We do have many exciting new technology start-ups in the field of HR that make your daily HR work easier and more comfortable. What is especially powerful is theconnection between technology and science.

Whether it be pre-recorded video interviewing or “recrutainment” solutions (where the employer shows their candidates the available jobs online in a fun way, e.g. in an online gaming format) … recruiting, for example, is going online, too, and for good reasons!

As a result, we have more efficient recruitment processes, a more accurate selection of applicants, a better candidate experience and much more...

5. Voice Analysis, Eye Tracking, ... New Stuff!

In recent years, new methods have emerged that attempt to make automated voice analysis, eye tracking or biometric measurements usable for personnel selection and development. Reasons for this development are, on the one hand, progresses that have been made in basic research and data sciences. On the other hand, there is the old aim of gaining more objective information on people, that is not based on subjective self-reporting.

In contrast to Big Data, we are not trying to use existing data, but developing very new methods to predict future job performance or staff turnover more reliably.

The first applications are quite ready for the market, with more yet to come. However, there are limits. These relate to the wide-spread fear that "machines" and not people will be making decisions.

Despite the hype, many approaches are still in an early development stage and will have to prove their “real” value in the future. Neuroscience, for example, is an example of a field where high expectations have not yet been fulfilled in reality, even after many years. If newly developed methods are able to provide their proof of concept, we’ll be making a lot of things possible. Stay tuned …