Rev Up Your Engines: Recruiting and Hiring Predictions for 2023

The constant shifts and pressures within the job market over the past couple of years have been nothing short of an adventure for recruiting and hiring teams.However, as we look to 2023, despite a slowing economy, industry reports show a continued tight labor market , placing more pressure on companies to ensure their recruiting and hiring processes are equipped to attract and retain top talent. 

To give organizations a better idea of what to expect so they can better prepare, here are a few predictions on how the talent acquisition market will evolve in the coming year and recommendations on how to best meet these demands. 

Resurgence in Employee Engagement for Retention

As witnessed with trends like “The Great Resignation” and “Quiet Quitting,” the COVID-19 pandemic led to a widespread reevaluation of what people want from work and what organizations need to do to adjust to this new reality, namely, reignite employees’ sense of connection and purpose for increased engagement.

There are many steps organizations can take to re-engage employees, including rising wages, revisiting vacation time, and introducing new employee well-being programs. Hence, employees know they are viewed and valued as more than just a cog in the machine.

In addition, creating new opportunities to deepen company culture, especially with hybrid and remote work adoption, is essential for uniting employees and teams. They all feel a sense of purpose and importance connected to the company’s business objectives and mission.

In addition to remote work adaptation, companies today are challenged to identify where they stand with humanitarian and social justice causes. Employees seek companies that share similar values and look to their employers with expectations for what they’re doing about diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI), unbiased hiring, and ethical business practices. Companies must adopt the proper systems and technology to ensure they’re addressing all these issues and communicating them to their employees.

Professional development programs that promote career growth and offer new skills and teachings are critical to keeping employees engaged and will lead to more excellent retention and business success. Finding qualified and best-fit talent can be a cause for celebration, but incumbents must clearly define career paths and understand the value of their contributions.

Recruiting and Hiring for the New Era of Automation

With the pandemic and associated increased virtualization across the workforce, the ideal worker’s skill sets have shifted  to more cross-functional and team-based skills. “Skills” are being defined increasingly broadly, but not all are equally important for a given job. Soft skills such as digital readiness, adaptability, teamwork, and creativity are often highly predictive of job success.

Organizations should consider including these additional measurements as the foundation of a predictive hiring process if relevant to the job. Soft skill measures are often low in the potential for bias, and employers must remain attentive to sources of bias in hiring. Bias can drive teams to gravitate toward candidates with similar qualities and backgrounds.

But as more organizations focus on diversity in the recruiting process and leverage ethical-based hiring platforms, they will discover that the increased diversity of their employee population brings significant increases in innovation and performance. Think of this as culture “add” rather than fit. 

Continued Increase in Hiring Technology Platforms to Find Best Fit Candidates

Moving into the new year, more organizations will recognize the value of adopting agile, automated, intelligent hiring platforms with pre-employment assessments and interview technologies to help them address both candidate scarcity and abundance while also being able to shift between the two quickly.

According to a recent Modern Hire and Aptitude Research report, 73% of companies increased their TA tech investment in 2022, and 70% of companies plan to continue to invest the same amount in TA tech, even during an economic downturn.

Adoption of hiring technology with scientifically designed selection procedures can help predict long-term employee fit and retention, which considering the current labor market and uncertain economy, is an intelligent strategy for saving millions of dollars in turnover costs in the new year.

The Candidate Experience as the Be-All and End-All

Anticipating the labor market will continue to be challenging in the coming year. Hiring teams must build brand-rich candidate experiences that include opportunities to demonstrate skills through ethical, science-based job previews and/or simulation assessments.

They will also benefit from offering personalized feedback in as close to real-time as possible. As we saw over the past year, building a positive candidate experience can significantly affect the candidate’s perception of a company and their decision to accept a position.

While the various uncertainties and chaos of the job market can’t be avoided, companies can implement new technologies and restructure processes that will help reduce turnover and retain their valued employees. Doing so will make their organizations more effective and desirable places to work in 2023 and the years after.

If you’re interested in leveraging new technology to help your company source top talent, contact us today.

Eric Sydell, Ph.D., is the executive vice president of innovation at Modern Hire.