Applying for a job is one of the most stressful things a person can do in life. It requires everything from polishing up that resume to ensuring there are no gaps in references or qualifications – and that can all take time. To add to that, there’s also a layer of risk. What if the situation has been mismatched, and you’re not as suited to the role as you previously thought you were? The good news is that the risk of that is diminishing with every passing year thanks to a useful combination of changes to both the labor markets and recruitment technology. This article will explain more.
Technology on hand
Tech is shaping many different aspects of modern culture, and everyone is starting to feel the changes. And while areas like travel and shopping tend to get the most airtime, professional services are also seeing great changes thanks to modern tech. One such way is through the development of artificial intelligence tools for use in recruitment.
The tools are diverse, and there’s no one fixed system these tools can use. But there are some common hallmarks. Entrepreneurs including Joanna Riley have created software packages which use math to determine where the gaps are in a talent team. They remove the problem of “human bias”, too. That term refers to the common situation in which HR professionals and other recruiters end up subconsciously applying too much judgement, thereby missing the potential of people who might otherwise do a good job. The adverse factors are perhaps due to a candidate’s ethnicity or some other irrelevant characteristic.
And there’s more. Firms which are struggling to find the right people often end up scraping the barrel, but by using a tool to get through the wealth of data out there in the form of resumes, LinkedIn profiles and more, it becomes possible for recruiters to settle for the best rather than the second or third-best!
Increased job mobility
Another way in which recruitment mismatches are largely being phased out of most job hunters’ experiences of the world is through changes to the market. The labor market is also changing in a structural way, and people around the world are reaping the benefits of this. It is now far more common for people to change jobs, for example. The era of a “job for life” has now largely gone thanks to the decline of traditional work such as manufacturing. Firms no longer need to make decades-long investments in particular factories or plants, and as a result the market is nimbler.
For employers and recruiters, this is a double benefit. It means that people who are dissatisfied in their jobs and hence cause a mismatch are less likely to want to stick around anyway, as they can often simply get another job to which they are better suited. And it also means that those employees who are not up the relevant performance standards can more easily be removed from their posts – and the mismatch can be solved more easily. In short, changes to the labor market have made it far easier for both sides of the recruiting equation to ensure that mismatches are either avoided altogether or have their effects more significantly mitigated.
Changes to culture
While technology and other major changes have played an important role in shaping a world in which recruitment mismatches occur much less often, it’s also the case that cultural shifts have played a part. These days, people are much more in tune with what they need on a personal or even spiritual level as well as what they need on a material one.
In the past, people were perhaps a little more likely to tell themselves that they ought to just go to work in order to earn money and ensure that there was food on the table. Now, however, meaning is often sought in a job, and this has led to a process of introspection for many job hunters, and a situation in which people are looking for maximum enjoyment as well as material benefit. As a result, it’s now less likely that a person will stumble into a job they dislike.
Recruitment culture has changed so much in the last few decades that it would be almost unrecognizable to the employers and employees of 50 years ago. Now, mismatches between those offering and those accepting jobs are almost a thing of the past thanks to the work of entrepreneurs who have put together top quality tech tools designed to weed out such problems. And with structural changes to culture, society and the labor market also added in there, it’s clear that things have changed – for good, and for the better.
