I recently sat in on a webinar hosted by glassdoor.com and listened to their chief economist list his predictions for hiring in 2019. This article is a list of some of those predictions.
But first this:
We know that 2018 was a good news/bad news year for many businesses trying to recruit salespeople. The good news was the booming economy, with rising salaries and profits. The bad news? With very low unemployment, it became much harder to find qualified salespeople to hire. Those coming in with resumes were often not similar in quality to those seen in recent years. Job boards also produced very meager results. Why? Because most of the well-qualified sales people were already employed.
It seemed that finding salespeople with good experience and “selling skills” became a monumental task in 2018. What lies ahead for 2019?
What are the predictions for 2019?? – A list taken from Andrew Chamberlain, PhD., Chief Economist at GlassDoor:
1) 2018 was a year where “job seekers were in the driver’s seat.” 2019 will be even more so.
2) 2018 was the “Year of the Woman” and women will be recruited even more highly in 2019, especially for top-level positions.
3) “Tech is where it is at — it is booming — but interestingly, in the text sector, the future of hiring is for non-tech positions. Among the main positions he listed: Sales associates, marketing teams etc.
4) IQ and EQ (Emotional Intelligence) skills are becoming much more important in the workplace for reasons listed below.
5) Hiring is increasingly based more on skill sets than on resumes.
6) “Belongingness” is much more important to new hires, especially younger ones. The emphasis needs to be on letting people keep their identities at work and encouraging them to be authentic. It is assumed that the company will work hard to also understand their identities.
7) Companies will, more than ever, need to “Walk the Talk” about what they stand for and what values they promote. Otherwise, new hires will not stay and/or will not assist in referring friends in their peer networks to the company.
8) There is a tidal wave that is beginning to hit companies — ‘Boomers’ leaving the workforce. Businesses will have to learn to do more with fewer workers. They also need to add more training and development so that older workers will not feel isolated and leave too soon.
9) Companies are having to learn to adapt to not having a full workforce. The emphasis will shift to doing more training with existing employees and increasing the efficiency of the existing workforce.
10) Many companies are beginning to fill the gaps in the workforce with increased hiring of relatively inexperienced people with good basic traits. They will then train them on the job, after their hire. The company will qualify them as they grow with their teams.
11) Much of this increasing company training is moving online.
12) Companies must up their recruiting game. His words: “Put your own recruiting on jet fuel.”
13) Companies must work hard at building their employer brand. It takes decades to do it well, but it is necessary to start now.
14) Make sure each person you bring in is a good fit. Any tools that help you sort through candidates and find quality people and integrate them well gets you ahead.
15) Invest 1% to 2% of your budget into training each year. Continue refreshing skills and building new ones. Every employee needs 40 – 80 hours a year of training to stay fresh and keep growing.
You can find a lot of Dr. Chamberlain’s research results on the Glassdoor web site. Search for research studies. His Twitter feed is: @GDforEmployers