By Peter Weddle, CEO TAtech
It’s that time of the year again. Pundits and researchers, solution providers and publishers can’t help themselves. They feel compelled to pull out their crystal balls and tell the rest of us what we can expect in the days and months ahead.
If your social media account and emailbox are as full as mine, you’ve probably thrown up your hands and moved on to the day’s business. I would respectfully suggest that would be a mistake. Why? Because those predictions do alert us to ideas and issues we should at least be aware of and, perhaps, think more deeply about.
So, in the interest of saving you time, here’s a brief, curated list of other peoples’ predictions for 2024 and the 3 key take-aways I think we can draw from them:
Lever posted 5 Talent Acquisition Trends That Will Define 2024. They include:
• Heightened focus on data-driven recruiting and hiring strategies
• Optimized approach to candidate engagement and conversion
• Greater emphasis on internal mobility and employee retention
Korn Ferry published Talent Acquisition Trends 2024. It featured:
• Cautiously, AI and recruiters will find hiring harmony
• AI is helping candidates apply themselves
• It’s not about where you’ve been, it’s what you know: hiring for skills
LinkedIn led with 10 Predictions for 2024 from a World-of-Work Expert (Dan Schwabel). He cited:
• Employers and employees will strike a deal on hybrid work schedules
• Working parents and women will drop out of the workforce due to a lack of childcare support
• Employers will experiment with a shorter workweek as employees demand more flexibility
And more generally, Newsweek published 5 HR Trends for 2024. It focused on:
• Limiting Tech Addiction and Work Burnout
• Building a Security Culture for Remote Employees
• Increased Focus On Health and Safety
And, of course, no set of predictions would be complete without something from the world of AI. So, here’s TechCrunch’s post on 8 predictions for AI in 2024:
• OpenAI becomes a product company
• Apple jumps in
• Legal cases build and break
What can we infer from all of this?
Here’s what I think are the 3 key take-aways:
• Strategic: The competent acquisition, implementation and use of talent acquisition technology will increasingly spell the difference between the bottom lines of corporate winners and also-rans.
• Financial: That business reality will accelerate the movement of money into corporate TA teams for product acquisition and into solution providers for new product development.
• Wild Card: And finally, the only cloud on the horizon: talent shortages and labor unrest may push employers to adopt AI and automation more rapidly, in an effort to reduce their recruiting exposure.
Food for Thought,
Peter
Peter Weddle has authored or edited over two dozen books and been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He is the founder and CEO of TAtech: The Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions.