LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, has released its annual ‘Global Recruiting Trends 2018’ report, to help hiring managers and recruiting teams prepare for a new year. The report has unveiled four top trends globally as well as in the MENA region which are expected to have an impact on the way we find jobs, get hired and stay engaged at work in 2018.
The four trends – diversity, new interviewing tools, data and artificial intelligence were identified based on numerous expert interviews and a survey of 9,000 talent leaders and hiring managers across the globe.
In the MENA region, diversity has evolved to be the biggest game-changer and most embraced trend with over half of companies already tackling it head-on. According to the report, 80% of talent acquisition leaders and hiring managers say that diversity is the top trend affecting how they hire, with companies prioritising diversity – gender, race, ethnicity, age, education, etc to improve culture and boost financial performance, as they are increasingly realising that diverse teams are more productive, more innovative, and more engaged.
“Hiring talent has become highly transactional. The tedious candidate searches, the endless scheduling, and the repetitive screening are inefficient and mind-numbing. It’s time for a new era of recruiting that focuses on the more gratifying parts of the job – the human part, the strategic part. This year’s four top trends are doing just that. Collectively these four trends: new interviewing tools, artificial intelligence, diversity and data are elevating recruiting to a more strategic profession. By killing the transaction, they’re giving MENA companies more time to build candidate relationships and think critically about how to win talent,” said Ali Matar, Head of LinkedIn Middle East and North Africa, LinkedIn.
According to the report, a new age interview process is emerging in MENA to solve the problems with traditional job interviews, as the talent leaders who were surveyed noted the bias problem in the traditional style of interviewing. More than half (58%) of hiring managers feel that interviewing innovations are ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ important to the future of hiring. Innovations such as job auditions, soft skills tests, meeting candidates in casual settings, virtual reality assessments and video interviews are gaining traction.
This new era of talent intelligence is a big step forward as it’s allowing recruiting professionals to use data to influence the strategic direction of their companies and elevate their own careers. 48% of respondents say that they see data analytics as critical to the future of hiring, with 48% identifying it as a top trend affecting how they hire.
Hiring managers in MENA are also already seeing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it can help them work faster by automating administrative tasks, and smarter by generating insights they wouldn’t think of alone. According to the report, 36% of professionals feel that AI is a top trend affecting how they go about hiring employees.
“AI is the future, but so is the human touch. AI is a huge step forward for talent acquisition, but it will never fully automate it. Companies still need people – people to persuade and negotiate, to understand candidate needs, and to build communities and cultures. These four trends are just the beginning of what we predict is a movement to make the transactional recruiter obsolete. To stay alive professionally, recruiters will have to embrace them,” added Ali Matar.
LinkedIn surveyed nearly 8,800 recruiters and hiring managers from 39 countries about these trends. In the MENA region, 339 talent acquisition professionals and hiring managers were surveyed. You can download the full report here: https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/recruiting-tips/2018-global-recruiting-trends
