Recruitment landscape has changed forever, Baby Boomers are retiring and Gen X is no longer forming the majority of the workforce. Almost every qualified person is already having a job and not actively looking for a new one. The new generations, Millennials and Generation Z require a lot more from an employer, even from the recruitment stage. If we go even further with the labor market analysis and the changes triggered to the recruiting and selection process here are some of the major trends:

• The talent shortage is getting worth;
• Candidates are having now the power, they pick the company they like not the other way around;
• The Millennials and Gen Z have different expectations on what they look for in a company, and they are the majority of the workforce. They also change jobs more often than the other generations. Note that employees ages 20-34 change jobs as an average at every 2.8 years while employees ages 35-44 change jobs every 4.9 years and employees ages 45-54 change jobs only every 7.9 years. This means that retention is the other side of recruitment and companies should put more effort in increasing retention.
• Job shopping is now commonplace, so things like your employer brand and career page from your website are more important now than a year ago.
• Social media is the new trendy recruitment channel that can increase your pool of candidates but your competition can also tap into this resource.
• Flexible hiring strategies are available both for the candidates and for the employer.
• Recruitment speed is more important than ever, not just as a quantitative indicator, the old days to fill, but as a must in attracting top candidates. If you are not fast enough your competition will get the top runners.
• You cannot consider any more that the recruitment is finished when the offer is signed. Because the candidates are job shopping, other, more attractive offers may show in no time modifying the candidate’s decision.

With all these changes what should a company do to win the war for talent: the new buzzwords are candidate experience and candidate engagement? HR should learn marketing techniques related to customer experience and transpose them in the recruiting and selection process to enhance the candidates’ experience. They also have to learn that employees’ engagement is starting from the candidate phase so this stage should be included in the overall engagement strategy.

This candidate-centric recruiting model requires engaging candidates at the right moment, in the right way, and is looking at every single stage of the overall candidate journey, starting from the moment a candidate becomes aware of your employer brand (“first look”), let’s say by looking at your website at the career page and extending flawlessly and seamlessly into employee engagement once they are on hired and the induction and onboarding process is starting (“first day”).

A new term is emerging regarding how to treat rejected candidates: we should Rejobify them. You may wonder if this is not too farfetched to think about the rejected candidates’ experience and to invest time and not only in their experience.