December 28, 2012

Cliff diving: What's trending for '13 recruiting?

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This weekend, we stand on the precipice of a new year. Some people might call the 2013 threshold one small step on the journey to recovery. Others might call it a giant leap over a cliff — a fiscal cliff, if you will.

With a scant four days left for Congress to play Russian Roulette with other people's money (read: ours), year-end hiring market prognostications are now more speculative than ever. Either Seattle is poised to take advantage of encouraging economic data for 2013 (e.g., 7.8 percent unemployment rate; nearly 2 percent annual growth forecasted through 2017), or we're about to see the return of soup lines as unemployment benefits start getting cut.

As this manufactured economic crisis continues, I took some solace in the words of Dr. John Sullivan, a human resources expert and advisor to Fortune 500 firms. For those redoubling their efforts to make career adjustments next year, here are five practical job search tips I gleaned from the 2013 recruiting predictions Sullivan made on the recruiting site Ere.net. Let's hope these tactics can make "lucky '13" a happier new year, indeed.

1) Get mobile — With firms increasingly casting a wider global net to find the perfect match, Sullivan says, job seekers will see more sophisticated mobile apps to apply for positions, as well as online tests for technical knowledge and skills assessment. Rather than make costly in-person visits, many firms, he says, will conduct remote college recruiting efforts via social media to evaluate only the top-performing students. Sullivan even predicts that the taboo against video interviewing will soon fade, out of sheer practicality.

2) Know your metrics — This coming year will see a rise in "data-driven recruiting," Sullivan says, so job seekers should follow the labor cycles of their industry closely and quantify their return on investment. "Most current recruiting metrics are useless as decision tools, because they only report what happened last year," he says. "Predictive analytics help you understand what is about to happen, so that you can act in time."

3) Seek referrals, early and often — Referrals are nothing new, but they will become even more important for social media-savvy college students. "The referral recruiting model that is so effective with employees can be easily adapted for use in getting referrals from recent college hires," Sullivan says. The target percentage of hires from referrals should reach 50 percent at top firms, he adds.

4) Emphasize innovation — Many companies in 2013 will use data-driven techniques to find high-value innovators "who are rejected by most hiring systems," he writes. One trending method of finding innovative workers is the concept of "acqui-hiring," or purchasing small companies for the sole purpose of obtaining intellectual capital. So, if job seekers cannot get a foot in the door at a major company, they might have a second chance if they join a small startup with a game-changing idea.

5) Don't forget your old employers — Job seekers may not like the idea of revisiting the scene of a traumatizing layoff, but many firms that enacted large-scale workforce reductions during the Great Recession are looking to rehire their best performers. These so-called "boomerang hires" may reach as high as 15 percent of hiring activity next year, he adds.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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