Hospitality Recruitment Trends & Digital Transformation

Three HR Trends That Recruiters Cannot Ignore

For a long time, the HR market has been trying to balance between human and resources. But over the past few years, this has been on the crest of digital change, because people themselves have changed, their rhythm of life and values.

Today, millennial workers do not build their usual linear careers, after a certain number of years, rising to a new position in the selected industry. Career ceased to be an end in itself for them, and life is subject to the frequent change of fields of activity, interests and habitats.

The business is changing too, which begins to hunt for T-shaped talents (people who, in life, work equally well with two approaches – technical and humanitarian), experiment with agile and adapt the corporate culture to the interests of generations.

In these new conditions, the HR specialist should be one step ahead of the first and second – he needs to know how to assemble the most productive team, unite people who can be in different countries, motivate them and help them to develop thier skills.

Crucial factors in a hiring process of the HR specialist is his/her skill set – a talent that a person sometimes possesses even in spite of his/her education. If 20 years ago the diploma and work experience for 10 years were indicated in the resume, now the employer is interested in what projects the HR manager participated in the last three years and what he learned over the same period.

Three Future Trends

In 2019, the HR market identified three main trends that determine its future for the next few years and set the path for the professional development of recruiters themselves. They will have to significantly push the boundaries of their skills by borrowing tools from IT professionals and marketers.

• The first trend is the development of smart recruiting, searching for the most relevant candidate vacancies in the shortest time using digital tools.

Artificial intelligence frees a specialist from routine tasks, significantly reducing the time spent on them. This leads to the fact that the threshold for entering the profession becomes higher: a robot takes on the tasks of a junior, who quickly checks a large number of resumes, can conduct an initial telephone interview or chat with job seekers.

As a survey of participants at the HR-Digital 2018 Summit showed, every tenth domestic company uses AI as an assistant to a recruiter. And the HR specialist will have to learn to work with such an assistant.

Automation of all existing personnel processes has already begun – work with advanced office software, big data, the use of augmented and virtual reality, the integration of IT personnel systems in the digital business infrastructure – this is HR today.

• The second trend is the use of HR analytics.

Many companies have long been collecting information on the activities of each employee, but few have learned how to use it in the interests of business. Analysis of the data at a higher level allows us to understand what is really happening with the main asset of any business – people, what motivates them or, conversely, makes them quit. When the system accumulates a sufficient amount of data, it will be able to predict the effectiveness of personnel decisions or “predict” early layoffs.

For its part, the HR specialist should coordinate the process of collecting information, including feedback from each employee and his digital footprint, using online tools for assessing employee motivation and well-being. This will require him to own various analytical data collection tools.

• The third trend is the need for HR specialists in skills from industries that were not previously associated with them.

In an era of real battle for talent, HR is actively interbreeding with marketing. The object of advertising is not only the company’s products or services, but also herself, her image as an employer. Creating an HR brand today is a priority for most large companies. They carefully study their target audience, create an Employment Value Proposition and talk about it not only in vacancies on job sites, but also in social networks, which are actively used by almost 80% of job seekers.

Often, targeting and contextual advertising tools are used to attract specific candidates. Thus, the HR specialist needs to know at least the basics of digital advertising – how and where to look for the target audience, how to create funnels and consider the effectiveness of campaigns.

Personal Self Development

In order to respond to new demands of the market and customers, the recruiter is required to constantly update his skill set, but since the traditional vocational training system does not keep pace with the speed of technological changes, self-education becomes “Must Do”.

According to a recent HeadHunter survey, 92% of freelancers are self-educated. In this case, the goal may be not only the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. For many, various forms of self-study (with the exception of reading books, perhaps) are also a way to find out about the latest trends in the labor market and make the right acquaintances. Most of the respondents (88%) draw new knowledge from narrow-profile books, 70% attend specialized conferences for this purpose. Two-thirds of respondents prefer online courses and 43% go offline. Moreover, offline courses, according to survey participants, are almost one and a half times inferior in their usefulness to online programs, which are called the most effective training formats. Self-education is in demand not only in the professional sphere. Today, many HR professionals have become convinced that employers are willing to pay more for candidates having certain soft skills. As the survey showed, the cost of the applicant raises knowledge of foreign languages, skills to build a personal career and increase personal effectiveness. Not surprisingly, many job seekers are willing to pay for professional and personal development.

HR-Uberisation

The approach to monetization of acquired knowledge is changing. Among HR specialists, there are more and more representatives of “literal” generations – those who don’t really like working under someone direction, want to determine the time and place of their work and constantly participate in new projects.

The number of freelancers is growing in the HR market. Freelance recruiters are most in demand in small and medium-sized businesses, which, while large corporations are experimenting with AI and big data, are actively looking for ways to save on hiring employees. After all, their costs (as a rule, of very limited internal resources) for attracting recruitment agencies are often not justified, especially in the case of selecting personnel for a one-time project or a pair of narrow-profile specialists in the regions. Here the uber format comes to the rescue, providing a convenient form of direct communication between the customer and the contractor. The emergence of various online sites where the customer company can choose a recruiter, and he, in turn, in one click to contact the applicant, simplifies the interaction process and makes it more beneficial for both parties.

An experienced recruiter still cannot be completely replaced by technology. And given the willingness to constantly learn, master digital tools for gaining knowledge and their monetization, digital transformation can give hiring professionals good chances for development in the profession.