Over the past several years, innovators in talent recruitment have been rallying behind trending recruitment processes to improve their day-to-day. Their goal is to make recruiting more gratifying and less transactional for recruitment professionals, while also keeping things interesting for candidates.

Below are the five latest trends to hit recruitment that will alter the way organizations manage their talent recruitment.

Innovative tools for the interview process

From screening candidates in a more efficient way and conducting video interviews to scoring candidates post-interview, and engaging them throughout the interview process – there are innumerable software tools and apps available today that make recruiters’ and hiring managers’ work easier and more effective.

While these software tools focus on streamlining recruiting processes, other techniques like developing online talent communities and conducting job auditions have taken candidate engagement to a whole new level like never before.

Improving conversion rates

A survey conducted by Social Talent found that on an average, recruiters sources about 225 candidates for a single position, which translates to a 0.4% conversion rate. Top recruiters were only slightly better with a 1% conversion rate.

Moving forward, screening out irrelevant resumes to find the right candidates – quality over quantity – would be a priority. Companies will be on the lookout for software tools to ‘intelligently’ screen candidates and rank them based on pre-determined criteria. Instead of merely focusing on metrics like time-to-fill, recruiting leaders would be more interested in finding the right kind of talent.

Enhancing candidate experience

Recruiting processes have long had the reputation of being slow and mechanical.

The mindset of treating candidates like customers is slowly catching on and will push more companies to differentiate their interview processes and provide candidates a memorable experience. While candidates will be open to interacting with automated tools in the initial stages, they would expect a more personalized approach and deeper engagement from prospective employers in later stages of the hiring cycle.

And companies are trying their best to exceed candidate expectations by engaging them through social media, blogs, and online talent communities.

Diversity

A survey of 9,000 hiring managers and talent leaders shows that diversity is the top trend that impacts how they hire.

Companies are making sincere efforts to foster diversity to improve culture, boost performance and to better represent their customer base. There is also growing evidence that diverse teams are more innovative and productive. However, despite the buzz around diversity, many companies are still unable to find a diverse candidate pool.

Creating employee resource groups, providing a common platform for expressing views, and making diversity and inclusion a part of their culture from the inside out, would be good starting points for companies trying to establish themselves as ‘diversity leaders’.

Artificial Intelligence

Everybody talks about AI but few seem to fully understand its impact on recruitment.

AI tools offer tremendous savings in time and costs and will continue to be a dominant force in talent recruitment. There are a large number of AI tools in the market for streamlining the mundane, repetitive aspects of recruitment. From tools that ‘intelligently’ screen applicants to chatbots that answer questions for candidates and schedule interviews – AI tools are improving the recruitment process.

AI software is also a major component of programmatic recruitment advertising. Companies can distribute listings across a vast network of job sites in real-time while displaying the most relevant jobs to the right candidates.

These trends are just the tip of the recruitment iceberg. It is up to individual organizations to figure out how to embrace these changes and maintain their competitive edge.