The future of recruitment is bright if you want to change!
Thinking about the future of recruitment
While recruiters nowadays can look to various revenue streams, they will soon have to adapt to the different ways in which candidates are responding to job adverts and the various methods of offering a service to companies. The future of recruitment is peppered with change and the below are a few guesses on what I see happening.
More companies doing the work themselves
Like with property agents, the age of the Internet is changing the landscape. Companies now have access to hordes of candidates and a great deal of reach without lifting much of a finger or paying through their noses. Why then pay a recruiter a large percentage of the new hire’s compensation for something that mostly could be handled by yourself?
Of course recruiters do have much value to give, but they need to repackage this value into services that are priced accordingly. Shortlisting offers one such revenue stream and this article mentions a few other revenue streams for recruiters.
Dealing with candidates
Job seekers are tired of recruiters calling them up with the wrong jobs, not interviewing them (as APSO requires in South Africa, for example), misrepresenting them during the initial stages of the placement process and never asking them what they truly want. They are also now able to get directly in contact with companies far more easily due to the interconnectivity that the Internet provides.
This means that finally those recruiters that don’t focus on their candidates will just have to find another way to make their money or go down in flames. Candidates don’t stand for rotten service anymore, no matter how great the opportunity that you “exclusively” have to work on (PS: there is no such thing as exclusivity in recruitment).
The future of recruitment is bright, depending if you are willing to change. Recruiters have to open up new revenue streams and start listening to the changing needs of their clients (companies) and candidates. Only after finding out these new requirements, can they package better offerings and survive long into the future.
