2023 Recruitment Trends

Towards the end of every year, you always lots of predictions for which trends will dominate the coming year, but many of these are guesses and don’t always plan out. As we are a couple of months in to 2023 now, let’s have another look and see which trends are actually starting to take form and dominate the recruitment landscape.

Skills Shortage Continues

With the Bank of England recently warning that the British workforce will remain permanently diminished following the pandemic, the recruitment skills shortage that dominated much of last year is set to continue. Recruiters will have to ensure they are resilient by engaging creatively with the market and expanding their own skills and knowledge.

Remote Hiring

The remote working trend has really taken off since the pandemic, and remote hiring is going to become an increasing presence in the recruitment sector throughout 2023. Lots of businesses are already considering the benefits of hiring remotely, as the process incurs lower costs and can actually boost productivity.

Where it gets tricky is conducting remote recruitment processes for candidates who prefer to work remotely. Both businesses and recruiters will need to be very clear with regards to the skills and experience they are looking for, as well as any and all expectations for candidates performing the work remotely.

Economic Stagnation

Along with their warning about the decreasing numbers of the British workforce, the Bank of England also predicted that the UK economy will likely stagnate in the near future. It has already been a volatile and uncertain few years thanks to unpredictable market forces, and there is understandable caution among a significant amount of candidates.

But this economic uncertainty doesn’t mean recruitment will grind to a halt, just that it needs to be more precise. There are candidates out there, but they are becoming more specialised and their skills more valued, which needs to be reflected in the recruitment process.

Recruiting via Social Media

Social media is already important to business brands, and it will become more involved with the recruitment process throughout 2023. Using social media to identify and contact talent is going to be an increasingly valuable skill, and one that not every recruiter is particularly skilled at. Having said that, some recruiters have been pioneers of using social media, and certain industries like technology have been making use of social media as a recruitment tool for a good while now. However, its use is now expanding into other sectors.

It is not just professional social media such as LinkedIn – which can be an excellent place to identify talent – but also the more personal social media platforms such as Instagram where employers can get a better gauge of a candidate’s personality and fit. We can also expect to see more candidates getting savvy to this approach and start using their ‘official’ social media accounts to present themselves how they would like their ideal employer to see them.

On the same lines, this year ahead is already seeing a trend for data driven recruitment, where data is used to help businesses find new candidates. This could and often does include data from social media, but also from dedicated recruiting tools such as job boards.

Recruitment Technology and AI

Speaking of data driven recruitment, AI’s continued expansion across multiple sectors has also started taking in the recruitment industry. It is already commonplace in business for many different tasks and processes, and its efficiency will also see AI streamlining the hiring process.

There are AI tools that enable businesses to identify candidates by scanning the likes of LinkedIn and other professionally-focused platforms. Candidates can be screened and filtered by the AI tools, speeding up the process to save recruiters both time and money.

The human touch will always be invaluable to the recruitment process, but we can expect AI to take over a lot of the original leg work that seeks out and finds the best talent in the first place.