Recruiting Trends 2019: Digitization of Human Resources
Human Resources is the industry in which people and personality matter. The name says it all. But how does this fit in with increasing digitalization? And which point is more important: humanity or digitization? The 17th “Recruiting Trends” study by the Centre of Human Resources Information Systems (CHRIS) at the Universities of Bamberg and Erlangen-Nuremberg in cooperation with the career portal Monster is proof of this: Digitization and humanity go hand in hand and bring the industry forward.
Download of the four main topics at Monster.de
One of the digital topics that has influenced recruiting in recent years is mobile recruiting via smartphone. This is important for both candidates and companies, with companies placing much higher priority on the topic than candidates: While 84.6 percent of the top 1,000 companies say that mobile recruiting will become increasingly important in the future – and even 100 percent of the IT companies – only 60.9 percent of the candidates confirm this. One possible reason for this is that mobile applications have long since been received by candidates – even today, a quarter of candidates state that they frequently apply via their smartphone. The most important reason for this: 50.8 percent think that mobile applications save time and are therefore more efficient. This also means that companies have to optimize their career content on the move. Seven out of ten candidates attach importance to this. For 7.8 percent of the candidates, the lack of an application alternative optimized for mobile devices is a reason not to apply at all. In other words, they do not switch to a desktop PC either. 70.2 percent of the candidates also value apps for job search or to find out more about the company (67.0 percent). More than half of the respondents also welcomed extended functions such as direct contact options or status reports on the processing status of the application.
One of the most important digital issues of the future is the machine-readability of job advertisements. 90.9 percent of companies see this as the most important characteristic of a job advertisement, enabling them to appear in search masks such as Google Job Search in five years’ time or to be found and processed by job reporters. An important topic, because seven out of ten companies (Top 1,000 and IT) assume that job recruiters will be used more and more frequently in the future. Five out of ten candidates also think this development is good. As with other subject areas, however, there is a clear discrepancy between expectations of what will generally prevail and one’s own plans. For example, only one in ten of the top 1,000 companies and the IT companies are planning to set up a corresponding offer themselves in the future. Companies are also predicting a large increase in the number of digital career consultants: After all, every tenth Top 1,000 company states that it wants to offer digital career advisors.
Digitization is driving the industry forward, strengthening effectiveness and leading to improved recruiter results, but humanity is essential. Particularly in the digital age, it is clear that values are consistent and continue to be extremely important. It is not for nothing that both companies and candidates value each other highly when it comes to the most important element of a good corporate culture.
For the current edition of the study series Recruiting Trends 2019, the top 1,000 companies (response rate 16%) and the 300 largest companies in the IT sector (response rate 11.6%) from Germany were surveyed and the results compared with the results of user behaviour and the assessments of 3,300 candidates. 160 of the 1,000 largest German companies (response rate 16.0 percent) participated in the company survey. According to Bisnode’s current database register, the distribution of the samples of the respective study participants is representative with regard to the characteristics of turnover, number of employees and sector in relation to the corresponding population. Details on how the study was conducted and a description of the study participants are available online. The results of the studies are presented in four main topics, which are available for download at Monster.de.