As recruitment professionals, we spend most of our time helping candidates find their ideal job.
But are recruitment professionals suitable for their own current jobs? Are their skills enough?
We asked 100 recruiters what they do, why they do it, what matters to them, and how their satisfaction could be improved.
Let's look closer into it:
A recent McKinsey study highlighted that hard skills are paid twice as much as soft skills. Our survey highlights that recruiters largely lean into their soft skills daily, which will need to change as the future of work unravels. Recruiters will need to build hard skills.
This explains why many recruiters believe that they are underpaid. However, as crucial as coordination, thinking, listening, and talking are soft skills, these will need to be increasingly supplemented by hard skills such as sourcing, data visualization, and talent pooling.
Our survey as well confirms that Recruiting is no longer a one-dimensional mandate. The profession's future will involve being a content marketeer, a copywriter, a salesman, and an analyst, among other skills. Recruiters are going from one too many talents and will be protecting themselves from the changes in the future of work.
This ties into the results presented on what recruiters are currently responsible for in their daily work vs. their desired learnings in the next 365 days.
It's interesting to see a clear link between what people do every day and which topics they want to deepen their learning. One thing is clear, though: Recruiters want to become better in things they are already doing.
But our survey shows that only a bare minimum of those surveyed spend over 30 minutes a day learning. That highlights that recruiters aren't learning enough. Add this to the fact that 91.9% wish their employer to fund this learning, and the need is clear. Not only do recruiters feel their employers don't understand their skills gaps, but they are also nervous to ask for the training they need to close those gaps.
Whether a recruiter believes their job is threatened by automation or not, it's clear that the skills demanded in this profession will continue to change. Bridging talent acquisition knowledge with other industry learning will be a crucial starting point for this improvement.
When choosing a new place to work, recruiters also weigh personal learning highly in their criteria. A recent article in SHRM confirmed this notion that "talent acquisition experts and practitioners agree that investing in learning —even when it's difficult to do so—is one of the key ways to maintain a competitive advantage."
We're on the verge of a new era in recruiting, according to Caroline Stokes, the executive coach, and headhunter behind The Emotionally Intelligent Recruiter, a podcast and training program dedicated to teaching recruiters emotional intelligence (E.Q.).
"Recruiter 1.0 was when an ad was placed in the newspaper and people applied by mail. Recruiter 2.0 represented the digital age when you applied for jobs on LinkedIn. Recruiter 3.0, on the other hand, is the Machine Age, in which recruiters must become data smart – not in the sense of Boolean strings and spreadsheet management, but in terms of becoming closer to internal and external clients."
Recruiters will need to master several new skills to adapt to their unique circumstances and work successfully and effectively alongside A.I. This progress will necessitate the appropriate mindset.
"When there's a major technology transition, there's nothing worse than someone dragging their feet," Stokes adds. "Things change all the time, and we have to learn to change with them. We need to try to foresee how things will turn out and learn about those features."
With record-low unemployment rates and skill shortages in many technical areas, recruiting has become more complex, leading to an escalating war of employment brands, recruitment marketing campaigns, and artificial intelligence (A.I.)-driven tools to deliver recruiting excellence.
A crucial part of our belief here at wearebridge.io is in something we call Recruiter 3.0, which describes how our profession will need to adapt to the increasing competition for talent and the changing structure of the workforce.
But how?
To become a Recruiter 3.0, you'll need to master an increasingly integrated set of tools, build your digital savviness and learn the art of influence. We believe that to upgrade to 3.0, a recruiter must:
1. Begin with a tech skillset (e.g., sourcing, scrapping, data analytics, etc.)
2. Build digital skillset (e.g., copywriting, email or social media marketing, etc.)
3. Integrate people skillset (e.g., presentation and pitching, negotiation, etc.)
It is a lot to learn, and it will not happen overnight. The career path of a recruiter will change dramatically. As a result, recruiters have to rethink their career strategies and learn new skills.
Some companies have already begun to invest in their talent acquisition teams in education, training, and development programs. But for many, it's still too soon to jump into the deep end.
Are you ready to become Recruiter 3.0 > follow wearebridge.io to hear more about how!