A Monumental Moment in Hiring: Flexibility and the Future

How do you know when a monumental moment has happened? Sometimes it can take a while before we realize just how much the world was flipped on its head.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say we’re at a monumental moment in hiring now, but I feel like we’re possibly undervaluing just how big a shift is underway.

I re-watched the awesome RAC conversation between Athena Karp (HiredScore’s CEO and founder) and Colleen Tiner (Beeline’s SVP of Strategy, Product, and Partnerships), Flexibility + Future of Work: Contingent and Automation.

And, well, my head exploded all over again.

Colleen explained the fundamental changes that are driving an increase in talent competition, as well as completely reorienting the way organizations plan their workforce.

She boiled things down to a few massive trends:

• Demographic shift: we currently have five generations in the workforce. As folks retire, the need for skills opening up there is increasing – often with gaps in workforce development. The pandemic has exacerbated this: forced retirement rates have gone up since the crisis began.

• New skills: Innovation and circumstance are creating new skill needs every day. Organizations are grappling with really challenging talent pools for expertise like vaccine researcher, aerospace engineer, and data scientist.

• Talent everywhere: The increase in remote work due to the pandemic has flattened the labor market, meaning competition has become global and compensation is surging in competitive sectors.
  

These are titanic shifts, but Colleen has gotten to see some of the world’s most innovative organizations tackle these challenges, and they all share a common approach:

1. Start with outcomes, reverse engineer from there
2. Treat your entire talent ecosystem as one, and create processes for a consistent candidate experience however folks are working for the org (perm, flex, etc.)
3. Use recruitment automation tools, like Wade & Wendy, to engage and reach the right candidates with the right hiring need at the right time (in a consistent way)

Okay, I don’t want to ruin the whole conversation if you haven’t seen it (again, check it out above), but it really helped clarify for me a lot of what’s happening. And hopefully you feel a little better armed for the next time you get the question:

“Hey, what the heck is going on with hiring now?”

This was excerpted from the 1-28-2021 RAC Newsletter. Sign Up for the Newsletter here.