The Future of Recruitment: Look for an AI Supercharge and a Focus on Quality of Hire

The recent publication of LinkedIn’s 2024 Future of Recruiting report has prompted some thought-provoking conversations among talent professionals. The report makes six predictions about what is coming down the line for recruiters, spotlighting how AI adoption, for example, will boost productivity and how skills-based hiring will help harness the capabilities of an expanded talent pool. 

I was fortunate to get the opportunity to sit down with Mike Smith, chief executive at Randstad Enterprise, to talk through some of the themes in the Future of Recruiting research and how the world’s largest global talent solutions provider is addressing both the challenges and opportunities on the horizon.

AI will supercharge recruiting

While just 27% of talent professionals say they’re using or experimenting with generative AI right now, 62% are optimistic about its impact on the recruitment process. Among those already using AI in their roles, the biggest benefits are being able to write job descriptions faster and more easily and being able to automate tasks to spend time on more fulfilling work, away from the mundane.

Mike says the acceptance and adoption of generative AI presents both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity for the industry today. Randstad Enterprise is working hard to upskill its own teams on AI, while also recognizing the need for a thoughtful, considered approach. 

“We have a tool,” he says, “that automatically creates job advertisements now, which we estimate saves our people between 19 and 27 minutes each time they need to do that. The challenge is what those people do with that time — how do we move them into more value-creating activities that align with the aspirations of those individuals.”

He gives another example of an end-to-end sourcing tool that can use a job description to create a list of interview questions for a role, generate model answers, and rank candidates based on their responses. The tool can reach out to potential candidates, who can click a link to get a brief understanding of the opportunity and, if they are interested, engage in a quick screener. Those who score above a certain mark have the option to book an interview. That process can run 24/7 automatically.

“What we’ve learned,” Mike says, “ is that the real benefit comes from catching candidates with AI in the micro-moments of job-seeking behavior, which may happen at 8 p.m. on the train home. A human can jump in and take over that conversation at any time and that’s where we see the real potential.”

Recruiters will help build the skills-based workforce of the future

Skills-first hiring is another theme set to shape the years ahead. Employers are increasingly recognizing the value in taking a skills-based approach to hiring and talent development, with its potential to increase talent pools by up to 10x and tap more diverse talent pipelines. The number of jobs listed on LinkedIn that omit degree requirements jumped by 36% from 2019 to 2022 and 73% of recruitment professionals say hiring based on skills is a priority.

At Randstad Enterprise, there is a growing recognition of the benefits of searching for candidates by skills, leveraging data and the capabilities of generative AI. Mike says one data point that has proved useful in targeting hard-to-reach telecommunications engineers, for example, has been looking at lecturers in second- or third-tier universities that have had papers published and gained notoriety on the subject. A correlation can be drawn between the quality of the professors and the quality of the candidates graduating from those colleges and, because the universities are not as well known, employing tools to map those individuals and contact them can prove a great way of tapping hard-to-reach talent in the current market.

Quality of hire will top the recruiting agenda

In the face of an ongoing professionalization of the talent industry, 54% of recruitment professionals say quality of hire will be a topic that shapes recruiting over the next five years. While talent acquisition has long been focused on metrics like time-to-hire and acceptance rates, there are signs of a shift to leadership asking how hires actually turned out and how that is being measured.

Mike shared his experience from a recent roundtable of 40 talent professionals from Fortune 500 companies, where only six were measuring quality of hire. “We, as an industry, never charge for impact,” he says. “We charge for our time in administering an outcome. We need to find a way to capture the impact of the talent we provide to organizations.”

Looking at the quality of hire requires assessing questions like the value that a new employee brings in terms of productivity, skills, and cultural contribution. From what I’m hearing, it’s reasonable to expect all of those KPIs to be in sharper focus moving through 2024 and beyond. Recruiters will need to implement objective and evidence-based candidate assessment processes, shift the focus from job to skill specifications, and analyze hiring processes in much more detail to unlock what drives the right hires.

Agility will be a must-have for recruiters

Another prediction in the report is that agility will grow in importance as part of the recruiter’s tool kit. Every talent professional will need to get better at helping clients anticipate labor market ups and downs and then pivot to address those quickly.

Mike describes the recruiter of the future as being like the conductor of an orchestra, carefully tracking data and then integrating that into market recommendations for customers and candidates to get ahead of challenges.

In LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting report, 91% of recruitment professionals told us they are focused on being agile to adapt to hiring needs, which means being able to work across functions, industries, and stages of the hiring process. As talent teams increasingly take on a more consultative and strategic advisory role, they will need to be supporting clients by providing scenario planning to map future employment needs, by staying on top of their business performance and strategic goals, and by looking at the potential to automate, outsource, or otherwise reshape roles to create value.

Recruiting teams will advocate for flexible working policies

Flexible and hybrid working options continue to be a hot topic among talent professionals, particularly as employers increasingly call workers back into offices. The research shows us that insisting employees are fully in-office has a negative impact on recruiting, reducing talent pools, attracting fewer applicants, and increasing competition. By comparison, 77% of recruiting professionals say that allowing employees to choose whether they work in the office, remotely, or a combination of the two has a positive impact on recruiting.

If candidate appetite for flexible work is here to stay — and we see it being even more of a priority for Gen Z — then talent professionals will have a job to do in convincing executives of the need to think more flexibly. Using data to make the case will help.

“Our overriding principle when discussing this with clients,” Mike says, “is that, whatever their decision, they need to be intentional about their decision-making process and authentic, transparent, and overly communicative about the reasons for their approach. We are helping clients understand the benefits they can derive by continuing to work with remote and hybrid teams, and what they will be giving up as a result.”

Attracting Gen Z will require a new playbook

The last prediction in the report looks at Gen Z, who will account for more than a quarter of the global workforce by 2025. The newest work cohort comes with a unique set of attributes and concerns, caring deeply about working for companies that share their values, and recruitment professionals are not currently confident about their ability to attract and retain them.

It is no surprise, as a result, that employer branding is once again the recruitment function that is expected to receive the greatest increase in spend, as talent professionals work with hiring managers to make sure they can tell stories that tap into Gen Z’s priorities. Our data shows Gen Z is 36% more likely to prioritize advancement opportunities and 34% more likely to care about skills development than other generations in the workforce, putting the onus on employers to invest in their growth to retain them.

Recruiters will be called on to work with clients to ensure their employer brand is authentic and reaches the right audiences, while helping them understand the unique attributes of Gen Z. Again, data will be keying in making the arguments that will support companies in achieving generational diversity.

Mike says: “We do see organizations increasingly trying to focus their recruitment on making sure they are more inclusive. In the talent market, rather than coming out with a standard employee value proposition, we are helping organizations design a relationship value proposition that goes further and describes how an individual can expect to have a mutually beneficial relationship with the business.”

Final thoughts: Embrace change to succeed

What is apparent from the latest data and from my conversation with Mike is that the recruitment industry faces a period of significant change and those that are willing to embrace it will be the ones to thrive. Talent professionals who are open to learning new skills and harnessing new technologies have much to gain as their mandates evolve into much more strategic advisory roles, sharing insights powered by data to shift many of the conversations around employee engagement.

This post is part of the In Conversation series in which Adam Hawkins, head of sales for LinkedIn’s search and staffing vertical in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, talks with recruitment leaders across those regions.