LinkedIn: Top 3 Trends Impacting Recruiting in 2014

If there’s one recruiting trend you can count on in 2014, its that LinkedIn will continue its dominance – and ubiquity – within the talent acquisition conversation. With over 90% of recruiters reporting to using the “professional network” for sourcing and screening candidates in 2013, LinkedIn enjoys a market penetration few competitors can match, as well as the unique ability to influence the content and conversation around industry benchmarks and best practices.

That’s why, even with the deluge of preview and prediction posts looking at the year ahead in hiring, it was worth taking a look at what LinkedIn forecasts as the top trends in talent in 2014.

Unlike so many point solutions or pundits behind these posts, the Mountain View based company actually has the ability to translate talking points into tangible talent trends.

And, not surprisingly (or inaccurately), LinkedIn use factors into all of them. Here’s their take on the top 3 talent trends recruiting and HR professionals need to know; click here to check out a full version of their most recent report or check out the SlideShare (a LinkedIn property) below:

The war for talent gives way to the war for talent branding. Recruiters ranked talent branding among the top 3 competitive threats for 2013, and we don’t expect that to change in 2014. Why? Companies also see this as a key competitive advantage: 85 percent* believe employment branding significantly impacts their ability to hire great talent. The fact is, while most companies understand that talent branding is what draws the best and brightest to their front doorstep, few companies are doing it, and even fewer are doing it effectively. In 2014, we think more companies will get it right.

“Going mobile” means more than just mobilizing career sites. Mobile might seem like a tired buzzword, but only 13 percent of companies say they’ve invested adequately in mobile, so there’s still a lot of work to be done here. Much of the conversation around mobilizing recruiting focuses on optimizing career sites. While that’s certainly important, it’s a piece of a much larger pie. We think 2014 will be about the whole pie – mobilizing the entire recruiting process from a prospect discovering a job via their tablet on the way home from work to a recruiter offering a candidate a job from their smartphone.

Smart companies stop losing the talent they worked so hard to recruit. Which came first, Steve Jobs, or the iPod? Executives increasingly realize that talent is their company’s greatest strength. Today we see some savvy front-liners leveraging LinkedIn products and services to get better insight into the skills in their current workforce, and to provide career advancement opportunities to high performers. They’re putting more focus not only on hiring, but on retaining their best and brightest, increasing their chances of success.

It’s interesting to note that these were compiled in June of last year, which gives us at least a couple of quarters to adjudicate their powers of prognostication – and so far, it’s looking like LinkedIn is right on the money. Of course, the real question of 2014 just might be not what to expect in recruiting or HR Technology, but rather, what to expect from LinkedIn. Any guesses?

Comment by Steve Levy on January 10, 2014 at 10:06am: *The war for talent gives way to the war for talent branding.

NEWSFLASH - there never has been a "war" for talent but there has been a war for recruiters and companies that know how to engage, recruit and retain top people. Branding is still a fluff initiative - think of talent branding as merchandising a product even when that product might be inferior. Sobering, right?

*“Going mobile” means more than just mobilizing career sites.

Golly gee - you have a mobile site. Too bad your recruiting processes are antiquated - and let's not talk about the quality of your recruiters and hiring managers. Fix the foundation before you paint the house, ok?

*Smart companies stop losing the talent they worked so hard to recruit.

How many smart companies are actually out there? Companies might be smart but so are jobseekers and they're becoming more educated as career consumers. Branding and "culture activities" alone will snooker a few but nowhere near enough.

Comment by Alan Strauss on January 10, 2014 at 12:01pm: I hate to say this (because if often comes across the wrong way), but I think that talent acquisition organizations often think way too much about quality of hire or talent retention. Recruiting the "right talent" is hard enough in most competitive markets. In complex recruiting organizations, it's all about quality of candidate. That's what we can control and should focus all of our efforts on. If company truly care's about bringing on and keeping the best talent, it needs to become experts in how to keep talent happy and motivated. That's obviously out of our areas of expertise...

Just a thought...

Comment by Matt Charney on January 10, 2014 at 12:23pm: Alan: I disagree - I think most talent acquisition organizations don't actually measure quality of hire as they don't have benchmarks or reporting capabilities, and in my experience, retention is never a focus - they tend to be too busy looking outside to focus internally, touching retention only when there's internal mobility involved. But I think that you make some interesting points on saving ourselves a lot of time by actually focusing on stuff that matters. Thanks for your feedback!

Matt

Comment by Alan Strauss on January 10, 2014 at 12:33pm: Great debate (or discussion)...This is touching on a few things that are close to my heart!

I do think that you are highlighting (or maybe I probably should do a better job highlighting) my point...

Recruiting is hard enough as it is (especially in companies that have to hire candidates in competitive markets) and I believe that talent acquisition organizations should spend ALL of their time thinking about how can we spend the rest of our time here identifying and attracting the "right talent" (not necessarily the "best talent" as some client demands may not be ready to hire or require the best of the best) for our clients.

As for the topics of metrics and measurements-I think that's a different conversation all together...Although, I did sit in on a presentation at ERE last year about a high profile talent acquisition organization that was bench marking their metrics on retention and quality of hire programs...