Hiring and talent acquisition professionals have grown in strategic importance as businesses get to grips with labour shortages and workforce planning, LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting report has shown.
Almost nine in 10 (87%) recruiters said talent acquisition has become a more strategic function over the past year, and 70% felt the team could “claim a seat at the table”.
Faced with rising inflation, only 45% of respondents to LinkedIn’s report said they had increased salaries sufficiently to keep up with price hikes. At the same time, however, more companies are embracing pay transparency so candidates can have a clear view of where they stand.
More than half of recruiting professionals (53%) said their recruiting budget would stay flat or decrease this year, and 60% of in-house recruiters said they would increase investments in employer branding in a bid to attract staff.
As a backdrop to this, almost two-thirds (64%) predicted that recruiting would be more favourable to candidates and employees rather than the hiring company over the next five years.
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Recruiters, in turn, will need to hone their skills to keep up with a candidate-driven market. The top five soft skills recruiters will need in the coming five years will be communication, relationship building, adaptability, problem-solving and business acumen.
LinkedIn figures show that recruiters with the above skills see three times more promotions than those without.
Recruitment teams will also need to work more closely with learning teams to build talent pipelines, the research found. Eighty-one percent of in-house recruiters said they needed to build partnerships with learning teams, and 56% are already working more closely.
Speaking to LinkedIn on this, Elsa Zambrano, senior vice president of talent and culture at NXP Semiconductors, said: “As hiring slows, now is the time for companies to review their workforce strategies and see how they can find and fill these gaps internally.”
Technology will also have a major impact on recruiting outcomes, LinkedIn said. More than two-thirds of recruitment teams (68%) said they were hopeful or cautiously optimistic that generative AI, or tools such as ChatGPT, would save time and make hiring more efficient.
Almost three-quarters thought it would automate repetitive tasks so recruiters could prioritise more strategic work; 67% said it would make it faster and easier to source candidates; and 59% said it would be faster and easier to engage with candidates.
And while the macroeconomic environment is negatively impacting hiring for 69%, almost three-quarters (74%) said this would not lead to a reduction in D&I efforts to improve the diversity of new recruits.
Becky Schnauffer, global head of strategic clients at LinkedIn Talent Solutions, said: “While hiring is slowing globally, there’s still strong competition for talent, with many companies facing significant skills gaps.
“Talent professionals are increasingly moving to skills-based hiring to unlock new talent pools and improve the diversity of their organisations, and are also forging new partnerships with L&D as their remit expands to include internal mobility.”
She added that candidates themselves would appreciate the focus on skills, particularly younger applicants, “as well as existing talent who want to work for companies that will help them grow their careers”.
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Reflecting the increased profile of hiring and HR professionals, chief people officer is the second fastest growing C-suite role in the UK, according to LinkedIn, having increased by 83% in the last three years.
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