The talent acquisition trends in HR for 2021 will continue to be influenced by the pandemic and new challenges, innovations and creative solutions will result from the debacle. Remote work for business continuity is likely to continue for the better part of this year. While protecting workforce health and safety and ensuring seamless communication will be the looming concerns, here are a few notable trends for 2021-

Remote Recruitment

Remote recruitment trend will also continue for the year with virtual interviews, at least for the initial rounds. However, for senior talent recruitment, such as C-Suites and executive levels, virtual interviews may not always suffice and may require a mix of virtual and physical interviews.

Organisational Agility

Organisations will have a healthy mix of full-time employees, gig workers, freelancers and community collaborators who will require their own set of tools, expertise and processes. Furthermore, there will be an increasing reassignment of talent as employees will face project wise reshuffle. Hence, this year there will be greater focus on soft skills such as openness, business savvy, assertiveness and decision making skills apart from technical skills.

Recruiter Tailored Technology

Talent acquisition technology will offer savings in terms of money and time for recruiters, candidates and hiring partners. The stress on contactless hiring and on-boarding will continue as there doesn’t seem to be an end to this pandemic  in the foreseeable future. We will witness increased adoption of augmented reality, virtual reality and methodologies such as two-way video interviews to speed-up the hiring process. There will be a greater need and concentration on building mechanisms to filter fraudulent profiles, reduce asset theft by fraud candidates and stricter background checks.

Talent Pool Diversity

There will be greater emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as many candidates are focused on the company’s DEI commitment. Companies were forced to accept geographical diversity as many employees returned to their hometowns in the WFH scenario. However, this is turning into a boon as it presents new opportunities to attract talent from different geographies and talent pools. With technology enabling remote working capabilities, greater inclusion of LGBTQ and PWD talent pools will now be possible

Learning and Upskilling

Remote teams and remote working will continue to be the normal this year too. This will necessitate the need for all employees to learn and use technology on their own. Organisations will see a greater investment of time and resources in online and self-help learning and upskilling pedagogy. Employees will have to be prepared for role changes as organisations adopt the motto to relook, reutilise and redeploy existing talent.

Personality Assessments

Psycholinguistic analysis and Psychometric tests will be an integral part of the selection process in order to map every role to the required personality and competency. Facial recognition, gesture recognition and speech analysis will be performed, and the results will be mapped for specific roles using AI and ML to create a report for suitability. Recruiters will have to work with their organisations to understand specific traits that suit the culture of their specific organisation.

This year we will also see a new side of employer branding which will be more relevant and connected to an employee’s needs in the current scenario. Employers will have to tweak benefits and policies to suit the changed paradigm to attract the desired talent. Talent acquisition will imbibe the accelerated learning of 2020 and application of AI/ML will continue to grow in HR. We will see an increased use of deep learning products that remove irrelevant CVs to identify profiles that matches job description. Remote working will eventually evolve into a role-based choice that the organisation and employee will make. Until the government signals the end of pandemic-panic, for the greater part of 2021, these trends will continue.