With a very challenging 2009 finally drawing to an end, now seems like the perfect time to make some predictions about what we can expect in the world of recruitment during 2010. Before I do that though I wanted to briefly reflect on the last 12 months.
Although it may well be remembered for a number of other things, 2009 was certainly the year that the term Social Recruiting began to enter the broader recruitment lexicon. There has been a huge amount of talk about how social media will change recruitment and unfortunately much of it is just self-serving rubbish.
With this in mind my heros of 2009 are ERE who put on two excellent Social Recruiting Summits to unpick what is actually happening by bringing people together to discuss genuine case studies. I attended both events and they were real highlights of the year for me, with the opportunity to meet some truly great thinkers and practitioners. November’s summit illustrated just how quickly the companies embracing social recruiting are making progress and I’m now absolutely convinced that what we’re seeing is a genuine revolution and not just the latest fad
So what’s in store for 2010? Here are a few thoughts: -
The Recruitment Market
A quick Twitter poll I did the other day revealed that most people are rightly cautious about 2010 and I would predict that we are in for another challenging year. Corporate recruitment will most probably pick up but this will be potentially overwhelmed by acute difficulties in the public sector. While some people will still do well; it could be a very painful year for those in the industry who aren’t innovating quickly and effectively enough.
Social Recruiting
The next 12 months are going to tell us everything we need to know about how much time it’s going to take for Social Recruiting to move through its adoption curve. There are lots of smart companies who have been using a quiet 2009 to plan social activity for 2010 and I’m really looking forward to seeing much experimentation, a growing body of case studies and more great events to discuss them. I’m not looking forward to the inevitable proliferation of bandwagon jumping and snake oil selling which could make “caveat emptor” the most used Social Recruiting phrase of the year!
Job Boards
The future of job boards seems to be a much discussed topic at the moment and something I’m going to be writing a bit more about next year. The key thing is that the debate shouldn’t be a live or die one; it’s all about the shades of grey. Job Boards are not some kind of unified entity, they are all different depending on the industries they serve and countries they are based in. With the pressures in the marketplace and the growth of social recruiting, 2010 should be an interesting year for many of them. As well as some inevitable market consolidation I’m expecting to see more innovation in the next 12 months than we’ve seen in the last ten years
Newspapers
By this time next year we’ll know whether pay walls work and once we do it’ll certainly move the debate about the future of newspapers forward. I could be wrong but I’m expecting the default “but we’ll always have newspapers” camp to be slightly less hardcore in 12 months time
So all in all 2010 may well be challenging but it certainly isn’t going to be dull!
Have a great Christmas!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: 2010, predictions, recruiting, Recruitment, socialrecruiting
Nice post Matt, I will add my 5 cents to the discussion. I believe that we will see a lot of job boards organising and hosting virtual job fairs as a way to provide innovative services to recruiters and jobseekers, while integrating social media and live interaction in the process.
We have had already many successful experiences in that direction in 2009 with Monster UK, France & Italy, Curriculum.com in Brazil, Moj Posao in Croatia and ourselves in Spain. And we see great interest in this matter in many other countries in 2010.
Have a look at http://demo.imaste-ips.com to visit our platform, or at http://blog.imaste-ips.com to learn more of our vision of the industry.
BR,
Miguel Rias
Matt,
I found myself reading your post wanting more from the fabled futurologist!!
I wanted to hear about how social media/social recruiting was going to save the world, end world hunger issues and create world peace. But as usual you brought things back to reality!! Boo hiss!
So no massive changes, just more incremental steps in the recruiting world for the next decade! I have to agree although the level of social media take-up is still too slow for my liking.
I look forward to sharing the stage with again at several social recruiting events next year, and good luck in your new venture for 2010, I am sure you will be in demand!
[...] Original post here [...]
Matt – interesting blog, in as much as you predict that much will change within the SM recruitment spectrum whilst challenging conditions will remain.
I agree with common trends on Twitter at the moment, people will have much less time for “experts and guru’s” and instead gravitate towards actual live campaigners.
My prediction will be that the ‘imposters’ will finally be found out. There is a lot of great work being done which is keeping clients VERY happy whilst a lot of naysaying bloggers spout ideas that noone will ever see. The work of youself, @wendyjacob @billboorman and @carveconsulting (plus many others) is relevant, but so many experts/guru’s will disappear in 2010.
Oh – and @miguel…. virtual career fairs have been tried, and have failed – let them gooooooo!
Merry Christmas and a Happy new year Matt.
Gareth
Ja ja,
dear Gareth, I wonder if you had time to pay a visit to the new Rich Internet apps, based on Adobe Flex, that I call virtual fairs. I assume you are talking about crappy HTML pages or even worse complex and annoying metaverses, which everybody fancied calling virtual career fairs in the past.
If you are looking for recruit branding, collect resumees or a pre-screening of candidates saving costs and CO2 emissions, then I believe that apps that can deliver more than 100.000 unique visitors, and conversion rates higher than 15 % (which job board can claim that?) with live IM chat and webinar interaction, are an interesting option,
The recruiters and jobseekers will decide, but I am afraid virtual career fairs are here to staaaaay
,
Merry Christmas!!,
Miguel
Hi Matt,
This is the first time I have read your blog and your comments for 2010 got me thinking. I have posted a brief response on my own blog and linked back to this article. http://www.phillipjenkins.co.uk/2009/12/throw-me-a-sheep/
I doubt either of us have much spare time, but if your interested in collaborating on a 2010 in recruitment feature let me know. Im interested in all aspects of technology in recruitment, from website – CRM – B.I.
Have a great New Year
Phil
[...] recent read a post on 2010 predictions on Recruitment futurology, and whilst I generally leave the core of my day job out of [...]
Hi Matt,
Glad to see you are thriving post Barkers, but I am afraid you will have to be a bit bolder with your predictions if you are going to wear that futureoligest hat. These things are like New Year Resolutions, nobody expects all of them to come true.
Here are my 2010 predictions.
1. More specialist stakeholder owned job boards like NHS Jobs and jobs.ac.uk for the public sector. With pressure on budgets this is an easy way to save money painlessly.
2. More low cost and possibly open source AMS systems will come onto the market. The current choice is limited and the market will respond.
3. Another high profile recruitment advertising agency will go the way of Barkers, selling out, merging or just going out of business. Now which one, that would take a real futureologist?
Happy New Year
Rik
[...] In Closing: Life Is Wonderful January 4, 2010, 6:00 am Filed under: Thoughts Several of my friends and colleagues have been setting New Year resolutions and predictions, and reflecting upon the last [...]
Thanks everyone for your comments, trackbacks and retweets……some individual replies:-
@Gareth – I hope you’re right but I think we’ll see even more fake “experts” than ever before this year. An expert to me is someone who has been there done it, bought the t-shirt and crucially learnt from their mistakes. That’s why I would only ever call myself an expert in digital recruitment (after 13 years I have a lot of t-shirts!), the social stuff just happens to be what’s important at the moment it’s not the be all and end all of it
@Miguel – Not sure why this comment string has turned into a debate about virtual recruitment fairs. Gareth’s right they’ve been around a long time (I remember seeing them on CD ROM back in 1998) and not taken off so there is much to prove. If you have something genuinely different and interesting though then fair enough and good luck to you
@Rik – Good to hear from you! To me futurology is about looking at emerging trends and learning from what’s happened in the past to develop likely scenarios for the future. You’re right I could be a lot bolder in my predictions but the current pace of change doesn’t really support that. Watch this space over the coming weeks though, I have much more to say!
@ Phillip – happy to chat, email me
@Andy – Agreed, I sincerely hope I’m wrong and that the adoption moves quicker this year!
Hey Matt,
As you know, I’ve spent most of my time in the UK avoiding the noise about what is interesting, exciting or innovative within our industry. This is mostly down to lack of time, because I get the importance of people that have a few t-shirts under their belts sharing their views… both in terms of what it does for the industry, and for ourselves as “brands” in this little space of ours.
One topic I’d really enjoy discussing with you at some point is what are the barriers to the real change in our industry/sector (whatever)… how do we move past talking about it, and predicting it and start seeing the real growth. I’d like to ask the industry a few questions, from the perspective of someone with a t-shirt or two to my name and see how it responds.
Here are some thoughts:
1. How come there are few/no Applicant/Tracking/Candidate/Management Systems out there that understand the importance of joining marketing and brand performance metrics to process metrics? (A “single tag” concept that would cover the entire candidate journey?)
2. Why have no Job Boards really looked at the importance of having a depth of understanding about WHO is in their CV database… and capitalized on the tremendous amount of insight that could be gained from actually being media owners, not service providers?
3. Why hasn’t an ATS added “Connect with Facebook” or “Connect with LinkedIn” (ideally) as a feature?
Here’ s a prediction for the future…
All of the gurus and experts who can actually say something to improve the sector and stop simply acknowledging that there’s new technology, but can (with their t-shirt on) tell people how to turn this stuff into a strategy, instead of a collection of tactics that make them feel “innovative”, will survive and will start pushing the entire industry to make more than just incremental changes.
Let’s build a wish list for the industry and challenge some of our peers who make things to meet the demand…
That’s my £.02…
Happy New Year!
Great to hear from you Drew, if I was ever to open a T-shirt shop I’d look to you as major supplier you have that many! Your questions and thoughts are a timely reminder that after over ten years the recruitment industry still hasn’t caught up with Web 1.0 let alone Web 2.0.
Perhaps there is something more / else / different that we could be doing to drive things forward….would be really keen to discuss further. Let’s catch up soon
[...] Recruitment predictions for 2010 at Recruiting Futurology. Highlight: “It could be a very painful year for those in the industry who aren’t innovating quickly and effectively enough.” [...]
[...] Recruitment predictions for 2010 at Recruiting Futurology. Highlight: “It could be a very painful year for those in the industry who aren’t innovating quickly and effectively enough.” [...]