You were rocked by the pandemic and rose to the challenge of the Great
Reshuffle. There’s no question that recruiting is becoming more strategic, and 65% of TA professionals say the team can claim a seat at the proverbial table.

But now recruiting leaders “have the opportunity to actually change the seats at the table,” says Microsoft’s Brett Baumoel. “You’re going to truly change the table itself.” 

As a change-maker, your influence will be felt across the C-suite — from talking comp with the CFO, fine-tuning your employer brand with the CMO, to addressing skill gaps with the CLO (Chief Learning Officer).

Rising inflation. Stagnating real wages. A stubbornly competitive labor market. With these three trends on a collision course — and compensation ranked in the top priorities for candidates in The United Kingdom — something has got to give.

The feedback loop between recruiting, finance, and DEI on discussions of comp needs to be more agile than ever — particularly at a time when pay transparency is on the rise. Recruiting leaders can help their companies stay ahead of the curve by raising this conversation today.

As the leader with the clearest view of candidate priorities, labor market dynamics, and real-time recruiting performance at your company, you’re in the best position to lead the conversation about pay and its business impact — from championing comp models that favor skills over pedigree, to retaining your top talent by pushing for pay increases that keep pace with inflation.

Jump to predictions about economic uncertainty ↓

Recruiting leaders know the competition for talent has not let up, even as hiring has slowed down. While less hiring typically means less power for workers, recruiting teams see that dynamic swinging back in the opposite direction over time: 61% predict that the future of recruiting will be more favourable to candidates and employees (as opposed to employers) over the next five years.

That’s why refining and conveying a clear, compelling employer value proposition (EVP) is more important than ever. With most recruiting budgets expected to shrink or stagnate, employer branding stands alone as the only line item where a majority of TA professionals expect an increased investment this year. But investing in employer branding won’t get you far if you don’t work to understand talent’s top priorities and authentically walk the walk.

Jump to predictions about employer branding ↓

The skills companies need are changing fast. As LinkedIn’s CEO likes to say, “even if you aren’t changing your job, your job is most likely changing on you.” Recruiting teams themselves are no exception.

Adaptability, problem-solving, and communication rank among the top five soft skills recruiters will need in the future. As TA professionals become more strategic partners, they’ll need to adjust on the fly and find solutions that ladder up to overarching business goals.

As companies align around skills-first hiring, recruiting teams will have to consider which skills they value most — in the workforce at large, and within their own recruiting orgs.

Jump to predictions about skills-first hiring ↓

The walls that once divided recruiting and learning and development (L&D) are coming down fast. While 52% of TA professionals say they’re already working closely with L&D, nearly four-out-of-five say they’ll need to grow even closer in the future.

As recruiting leaders’ portfolios expand to include things like internal mobility, skills-first hiring, and employee retention, they’ll need to cooperate more with L&D to prepare internal talent for new roles, identify skill gaps, and ensure your company is a place people can grow their careers.

You’ll hear the same from UK L&D professionals: 44% say they’re working more closely with TA this year, according to LinkedIn Learning's 2023 Workplace Learning Report. Those respondents also say the #1 top focus area for L&D will be aligning learning programmes to business goals. This is where recruiting can play a complementary role in understanding what skills the company needs.

Jump to predictions about internal mobility & upskilling ↓

Generative AI (GAI) — i.e., tools like chatGPT that intelligently generate content — is a fascinating new technology that holds promise for talent professionals, many of whom believe it can help in time-consuming tasks, like drafting job descriptions and personalized messages to candidates, among others.

While two-thirds (68%) of hirers surveyed in February 2023* said they were “very hopeful” or “cautiously optimistic” about the impact of GAI on recruiting, hiring influencer Glen Cathey characterizes himself as “cautiously exuberant.” He believes GAI can save a ton of time and let recruiters focus on the most human aspects of their jobs: listening to candidates, understanding their desires, and helping them find a new job they feel good about.

While GAI may help draft content, it’s crucial to keep a “human in the loop” — someone with the right know-how should always be there to carefully review and fine-tune generated content. “You still need to keep your hands on the wheel,” Glen says, comparing the technology to self-driving cars. “We’re not at the stage where you can let go, and we’re certainly not at the stage where you can be asleep behind the wheel.”

In an uncertain economy, you might think employers would pull back on efforts to diversify their workforces. Fortunately, that’s not the case.

Though most recruiting pros say hiring overall has been negatively impacted, three-out-of-four say that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring is not being deprioritized — in fact, 13% say it’s a higher priority now.

Work on DEI goes back decades, but it became a focal point for many in 2020, when a wave of companies pledged to make progress on diversity. Whether they deliver on that largely remains to be seen, and you might look at these survey results with the same skepticism — is it aspirational happy talk, or a real plan of action? Employees, candidates, and consumers alike will hold businesses to their commitments.

People both want – and expect - to work for an employer that reflects the diversity of our society and where everyone can see themselves reflected at senior levels. Those organisations which continue to focus on attracting diverse talent will be the ones that most effectively navigate this economic storm. Diverse hiring isn’t a nice to do, it remains an imperative that will help businesses succeed.”

As uncertainty grows, businesses need to be more nimble and responsive to sudden shifts in the market. To do so, employers may increasingly rely on contingent talent, like contractors or freelancers, whose labour can be scaled up and down on demand.

You can see this dynamic at play within recruiting teams themselves, though the data suggests a more stable split: 28% of UK companies expect to spend more on in-house recruiters this year (vs. last year), while 23% expect to invest more in external staffing firms.

If you’re a recruiting leader in 2023 and you don’t have a decent mix of contingent talent, you’ll be more risk-exposed to whatever the future brings — good and bad. You need some elasticity so you can flex up or down as needed.”

The labor market remains tight, and talent is expected to retain the upper hand over the next five years. To stay competitive, employers will have to reexamine their employer branding and make sure it aligns with what candidates are looking for today.

Every month, LinkedIn surveys over 20,000 members globally, about the most important factors they weigh when considering a new job. The top priority for candidates today in the UK is flexible working arrangements and excellent compensation, by a fairly wide margin, followed by job security, professional advancement and work-life balance. Happy and inspired employees and flexible working arrangements, are the two fastest growing priorities year-over-year.

There’s much more to your employer brand than good pay and flexibility, and offering them may not make you stand out — but be warned: if you don’t provide them, talent will take notice.

Gen Z — professionals born later than 1996 — are already a major part of the workforce. Many are just getting their careers off the ground, and their priorities reflect that.

Gen Z’s priorities are significantly different from their parents’ generation, Gen X.  Helpful and supportive management and career growth are super important to younger workers: they’re over 44% more likely to value moving up the ranks, compared to Gen X. 

The younger generation is also much more focused on the importance of having an inclusive work environment.

Slowly but steadily, employers have begun to embrace skills-first hiring — the practice of valuing a candidate’s skills over more superficial signals like an impressive alma mater or previous employer.

Now, skills-first hiring is poised to be the way of the future. In the UK three-quarters of recruiting professionals say it’ll be a priority at their company. But for some, their reach still exceeds their grasp: only 64% feel they can accurately assess candidates’ skills today. Clearly, they’ll have some catching up to do over the next few years.

How do we get better at filtering in, not filtering out? Recruiters have been trained to copy and paste a job description so they can hire really, really fast. They’re not really looking at what the work requires and what skills are needed. That’s starting to change.”

If you’re not convinced yet that skills-first hiring is the future, consider this: by being more open to candidates who don’t have college degrees, you’ll be taking a big step forward in diversifying your workforce.

There’s a growing consensus that removing four-year requirements is one of the most important things you can do to promote diversity. Members of underrepresented groups are far less likely to have attended college — but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the skills and potential to succeed. Research shows that workers who didn’t go to college but have experience perform almost as well as college grads on critical measures like productivity.

Today, one in five US job posts on LinkedIn don’t require a four-year degree. That number is expected to grow as more employers look to hire people from a multitude of backgrounds who can bring different perspectives to their organization.

Scrappy, self-taught types won’t have shiny brand names on their resume. Local community colleges are a great source of nascent tech talent that big employers never ever recruit from.”

Skills have become a critical currency, and companies will need greater visibility into what they do and don’t have. Forward-thinking employers will map the skills of their workers as well as the skills needed for specific positions.

A whopping 91% of recruiting professionals told us that understanding employee skills is required to make informed talent decisions — though slightly less (83%) say it’s currently a priority at their company.

Mapping employees’ skills will help you do a better job spotting skills gaps. It will also make it easier for you to match qualified workers within your organisation with open roles. Employees, in turn, will have an easier time finding job opportunities that fit their capabilities.

For this to work, however, TA teams must distinguish between which skills are truly “must-haves” for a role — and which are merely “nice to have.”

Business leaders need to have much more of an enterprise view into the skills across their company. If you only consider the skills on your local team, you'll hit bottlenecks and focus more on what you can't do, instead of what you can do."

Your company’s next great hire might already be on the payroll. The shaky economy is forcing companies to look within more frequently when filling open positions: 76% of EMEA recruiting professionals say internal recruiting will be an important factor shaping the future recruiting over the next five years.

Internal mobility provides big payoffs, starting with higher employee retention. LinkedIn data shows that employees stay at companies almost 2x longer if the employer is highly committed to internal hiring.

There’s also a growing probability that you will be adding internal mobility to your responsibilities. As someone who understands your company’s talent needs and is skilled at sourcing, assessing, and engaging with candidates, you’re uniquely positioned to take on internal mobility.

Internal mobility will be a multi-year journey for many companies, but you can also build shorter-term wins along the way. Looking at your internal policies to make sure they align with your vision for talent mobility — that's something organisations can do now."

With companies facing serious skills gaps, it’s no wonder 74% of UK recruiting professional say upskilling and reskilling employees will be an important factor shaping the future of recruiting over the next five years.

But there’s another reason why L&D is gaining more attention: employers understand that offering learning opportunities will be critical to advancing diversity and inclusion.

In fact, when LinkedIn asked members how they’d like to see organisations be more inclusive of underrepresented groups, “increasing professional development and advancement opportunities” was the #1 answer in several countries, including India, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, and Japan.

There used to be a lot of emphasis on qualifications. Now, it’s much more about skills and experience, the mindset is shifting. It’s really refreshing, and it’s the first step to creating much more effective, diverse teams. Organizations need to have diverse, inclusive environments that reflect their customer base — that’s what people want. That’s what attracts talent and what retains people. Organizations haven’t got a choice: they need to shift their mindset.”

“If I join your company, will you help me develop new skills?” “Will you offer me a clear path to advancement?” “Will you help me grow, even if I only stay at your company for a couple years?”

These are the kinds of questions candidates are asking and they will only get louder in the future. In the years ahead, candidates won’t just be thinking about a given job but whether that employer is the right career destination. This will be especially true for Gen Z, but holds true across the UK workforce: advancement was the #4 top priority for all candidates.

The bottom line: creating a culture of learning and focusing on internal mobility isn’t just a must-have to engage and retain current employees — it will be critical to the success of your recruiting efforts. For more on the state of learning, explore LinkedIn Learning’s recent 2023 Workplace Learning Report.

In the future, candidates will really be looking for a career destination of choice. They're going to care about more than the role they're hired for — they'll want to see an integrated career development path that they can grow into."