According to Joanne McDonagh of Human Resources Today, one of the repetitive challenges faced by recruiters is how to make employees excited about coming to work and giving their best. In this regard, employee experience continues to gain prominence even as the workplace changes. The involvement of recruiting agents and their ability to sustain user experience across several fields is a subject that attracts a far-reaching discussion. In the last couple of years, the recruitment industry has leveraged on technology by using social media and Apps for the hiring process. To a large extent, the response has been positive and user experience enhanced.

So what new trends will affect the industry in 2018?

Increased Demand for Machine Participation

Artificial Intelligence is expected to be used more in finding and hiring talent going forward. Through the use of AI, candidates can be selected anonymously and focus shifted to skills as opposed to age, gender or race, thus reducing the chances of unconscious bias during the hiring process.

Certainly, a lot of processes have been automated especially in response to searching for candidates. With more use of AI screening, HR departments and recruiters in general will become more data-driven in recruiting high-quality candidates

Social recruitment

Social recruitment will continue to grow as it has over the last couple of years. Tools that respond to larger populations and in a short time will play an instrumental role in 2018 and the years to come. This has been proven by marketplaces such as Fivver, Guru, Upwork and others where freelancers and recruiters are leveraging on technology to have work done.

The effects of such marketplaces will tremendously influence the workplace situation as we go into the future.

Improvement of Mobile candidate experiences.

Smartphone and internet penetration has led to a reshaping of user experience in the recruitment industry. Today more candidates are likely to get a job offer on their Smartphone faster than on any other platform. This tech-savvy nature of potential employees requires recruiters to be more responsive to deliver satisfactory user experience.

The expectation is that the faster potential candidates receive alerts the better the experience. Therefore, recruitment agencies will develop technologies to help them respond faster and more efficiently to job applications. Mobile Apps and interlinking websites with news feeds and social media platforms will help them improve the user experience.

New Interview Strategies

Video conferencing is not a new entry into interviewing but it will take a whole new design going forward especially at a time when applications such as Whatsapp and Facebook have developed video options for Smartphones.

Interviews conducted through social media platforms will also gain prominence. Moreover, social media is already a basic source of candidate information. For recruiters, the user experience challenge will be to balance between social media as a private entity and the use of social media in influencing work outcome.

Gig Economy and Short Term Contracting

Manpower reports that in the United States, 87% of people are enticed by short-term and long-term contracts. It has been branded the “NextGen” work. Recruiters will strengthen user experience by maintaining and growing relationships with potential employees. User experience, in this case, will be measured on aspects such clear job descriptions, proper boarding, leveraging technology to reinforce collaboration among teams, reduced time tasks and quick efficient processing of payments.

Final Thought

Organisations are more than ever before vigilant on technologies that influence user experience (UX). As competition moves several notches higher, user experience stands out as a major factor in determining the employer-employee relationship. Some of the new trends that will take effect this year include increased demand for machine participation, social recruitment and use of mobile apps to enhance the user experience, and this is just but a tip of the iceberg.

Which user experience trends should we also watch out for in 2018?

To explore your future career in User Experience contact Viv Farrington.