Predictions for Recruitment in 2012 – What is your opinion?

Daniel Richardson: “In the increasingly volatile recruitment industry, the candidate market is becoming far less loyal to any one individual recruiter and thus recruitment consultants are having to work harder to retain those relationships with individual prospective employees.

At the same time huge numbers of candidates are competing for each position, but for recruiters to remain ahead of the curve, the key is in sourcing and identifying high quality candidates that are right for each role.

Ensuring only the most pertinent of candidates are put forward for roles will allow recruiters to beat off competition from their rivals and retain their position as the recruitment supplier of choice for their clients.

Customer service therefore – to both the candidate and the client – is a key priority for the recruiter. And there is indeed already an increase in demand for recruitment solutions that aid in the filtration process and in easily managing multiple tasks across multiple clients and candidates. In short, this all boils down to delivering consistently high levels of service.

We can therefore expect to see a rise in the number of products and technology based services being released in 2012 which reflect this widespread current shift in emphasis, towards enhancing the levels of service recruiters are able to offer their clients, beyond the usual requirement of placing more candidates in more roles.

Dashboards for instance are now, as predicted previously, overtaking the more traditional databases in the real-time monitoring of activity and progress, allowing for a far greater degree of visibility and advance warning as to situations requiring intervention.

Most notable is the degree to which expectations have risen when it comes to mobile functionality. Indeed, ubiquitous working, where the lines between desktop and mobile devices are disappearing, are increasing in demand.

Software systems that are simply accessed via mobile internet browsers, however, are no longer cutting the mustard, as iPad and iPhone technology and its intuitive use gathers pace. Therefore, there is now a trend for recruiters to access the back office software system to display candidates and vacancies immediately during client meetings, therefore avoiding delay by having to return to a desktop to answer queries. This will cause technology providers to accelerate their development of mobile applications that are compatible with leading hardware releases.

There is also an increasing demand for recruitment systems that integrate with social media networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook, and that are appreciative of the wealth of information available in the wider social sphere beyond these two giants of the online social world.

Such improved visibility and the increased significance of “social” will allow recruiters to pull in information from an increasing number of sources, which will provide them with a clearer picture of their potential candidates from the very earliest stages of the recruitment process, allowing them to recruit intelligently.

Such a display of flexibility, visibility and responsiveness showcases the recruiter in the brightest possible light and enables a vastly improved service, and perception, and this is something we can expect to see come to fruition over the next 12 months…”