2020 Vision for Recruitment Marketing Trends

Recruitment marketing trends in 2020 focus on the recent rise of mobile technology resulting in a consumer shift towards cell phones as an individual’s primary device of choice. Organizations had to shift themselves in response, to focus on how candidates and employees engage with their brand through mobile-optimized career sites and processes, and by leveraging text messaging as a primary mode of communication.  

2020 brings a new year, and with it, a renewed focus on direct messaging via text, leveraging technology to drive recruitment process efficiencies through automation, building targeted marketing and communications campaigns with relevant and readily available content, and above all, consent and compliance. 

Text Messaging 

Leveraging technology that allows you to create instant connections with your candidates and employees will set you apart from your competitors in the 2020 war for talent. 

The consumer shift to mobile technology for communications delivery and efficiency demands that your recruitment process should, at the very least, leverage text messaging – and “chat” functionality – as a primary communications channel— if not your primary method. 

On average, text messages are five times more likely to be opened and read than emails. Results don’t lie – candidates and employees are more likely to engage (and to engage faster) via text messaging. They have come to expect text messaging to be available as part of an organization’s overall communication strategy.  

A.I. to Drive Recruiter Productivity

Artificial Intelligence. Machine Learning. Bots.

These buzzwords have inundated the recruiting space over recent years.  

If you’re not comfortable with the concept of A.I. (A.I. Apocalypse, anyone?), consider shifting your mindset towards the idea of “augmented” intelligence — embracing automation as a means to enhance human intelligence, rather than replace it.

Recruiting teams are utilizing technology to assist with understanding candidate preferences, to conduct prescreening more efficiently and more effectively, and to automatically serve candidates with relevant, tailored content.

In the realm of high volume hiring, augmented intelligence can help identify best-fit talent quickly and effectively. Building out job type success profiles and prescreens can allow technology to score your candidates as they come to you, and “boost” or highlight those profiles for your immediate attention and review. 

In this iteration, A.I. supports recruiting teams by sifting through high volumes of candidates to push them through the recruiting funnel, and hone-in on those who fit the job/success profile.

Targeted Content Campaigns for Candidates & Employees

In 2019, the focus was on how recruiters needed to start thinking more like marketers — to become more strategic in messaging to get candidates interested in an employer brand.  

The underlying principle is that candidates are consumers. With the rise of mobile technology, consumers expect they will be able to do anything via their mobile device — more than this, that any such interactions or transactions will be instantaneous and tailored to their individual preferences. 

Recruitment teams will need to take into consideration the candidate journey– from career sites to social media to the application process itself –to ensure interactions are optimized across all device types and tailored to the candidate’s preferences. 

Consent is Key. Compliance is Too.

We live in a world where data privacy, compliance, and consent must be front-of-mind for every organization. It is critical your recruiting and communications processes and practices (as well as the underlying tools and technologies you use) meet today’s regulatory requirements on a region-by-region basis. From GDPR to HIPPA to PII to CANSpam to Privacy Shield, the mere thought of how to manage all these different compliance requirements can be overwhelming. 

With the above recruitment marketing trends, companies will need to ensure the technologies they are leveraging have the capability, as well as the flexibility, to meet their compliance requirements as it relates to both their internal and external recruitment processes and legal requirements. 

Furthermore, organizations will also look for their technology vendors to provide compliant processes and technologies with consent management pre-configured into their native system workflow.