Recruitment of the future

Not long ago, the world of recruitment looked completely different. Jobs were published and jobs were found via newspapers, applications were sent in paper, or received in person. Today, most recruiters don't even touch paper CVs any more and job descriptions reach candidates all over the world through online job boards. Often recruiters and candidates don't even meet in person, using online communication to bridge the gap. There's no need to mention that this has been quite a shake up in the scheme of things.
The internet is opening so many doors and finding candidates is becoming an easier and easier task. It's not a secret that technology will develop even further - several articles and discussions address the topic. But when everything becomes so easy and candidate searches run automatically, will recruiters still exist? Let's have a look into the future!

Totally automatic candidate searches
Whereas basic keyword searches and Boolean strings are nothing new to recruitment, better and more successful software is developing. Total automation will be the result of today's research in IT solutions for recruitment purposes. The opinions on this matter vary quite a lot, as it is not immediately clear what the impact of this will be for sourcers and recruiters.
On the one hand, much less time is needed to look for suitable candidates, because the computers do everything for you. On the other hand, an employees skills, recent positions, or field of expertise are not enough to make a decision over a job offer for a candidate. According to a survey conducted by Cubiks Netherlands, a cultural discrepancy with a candidate is an exclusion criterion for nine out of ten employers. Therefore, job interviews are indispensable... right?

Online personality tracking
In their research about the prediction of personality and life outcomes Youyou, Kosinski and Stillwell found that assumptions derived from tracked online behaviour are, in most cases, more accurate than the ones made by a good friend or close co-worker. As time goes on, respective tracking systems will also be developed and tailored for recruitment. This means its unpredictable as to what extent job interviews are still needed, when this software is one day running successfully. Who knows, maybe one day we click around on the internet and after a few hundred clicks a job offer pops up?

Disadvantages of the developments
It's exciting to see how everything will develop! At least the same systems for fully automatic candidate searches cannot be used by several companies, or else every company would find the same people. It is not outside the realm of possibility that personality predictions based on clicks will also be used, though in the end, this is probably not too realistic. Every job seeker would simply start clicking only employer-friendly areas of the internet, faking their results.
No matter how recruitment of the future will look like, it will definitely be different to how it works now and will likely never stop changing.

By: Dorothea Schweinefuß