We do see the following Mega-Trends in Recruiting by 2035:
1. AI-powered Talent Acquisition will be „Standard“
By 2035 and much earlier – Artificial intelligence will have moved from being a support-tool of today´s recruitment environment to the talent-attraction suite for HR/Leadership, as part of an entire HR-and Biz-strategy. Highly personalized talent acquisition tools may include:
- AI-driven candidate engagement processes from first point of contact, to company start, retention throughout entire employee engagement until exit of employer – from few months to 30+ years (if long-term tenure at a company will prove being the goal at that time).
- Predictive and skill-based hiring-decisions: automated processes led by performance- based hiring metrics, analytics & processes – with or without ethical substance.
- Machine learning algorithms should ensure cutural-fit hirings and quality skill-assessments. Real-time screening and live-project scenarios will provide authentic people insights, even before decision making will happen.
- Predictive Analytics to forecast future talent needs, based on anticipatory (internal) hiring-needs and real-time (external) market trends – Labor market intelligence and connected AI by company as game-changer for hiring quality, value-add-to-org-transformation & process efficiency.
- Competing global or regional talent clouds & networks will be the new norm. New organization- and team-work structures maybe directed by a mix of classic leadership or AI-powered intelligence.
Means: Invest in ethical AI recruitment tools that offer transparency and data compliance – get started in upskilling HR teams to understand and manage AI systems more effectively.
2. Human-centric Talent Attraction and Reimagined Engagement
PEOPLE in form of talent-groups & leaders remain being THE game-changers for any competitive employer in the future. Traditional workforce or Leadership-structures may have transformed into fluid talent ecosystems or skill-based organisations, where matched talent capabilities and potential are working “at the heart” of critical biz-topics. For engaging hi-performing expert & leadership talents of tomorrow, highly differing recruitment strategies and engagement activities will make the key difference:
- Future talent shortages will have to be covered by multi-national talent sourcing processes, most likely beyond regional skill-demands and cultures.
- Engagement activities will be tailored around the future needs of organizations and include contradictory change-capabilities of demanding experts/leaders vs. existing company owners and top-leaders. Fast re-/up-skilling vs. slower learning & change-speed of organizations need to be directed (top-down and bottom-up).
- Future engagement tools will utilize hybrid workforce/leader-learnings and innovative thinking processes (AI- or people-generated) in real-time – to support vital recruitment processes and improving metrics & process efficiency.
- Hybrid workforce and onsite/remote leadership will drive unique, dynamic and efficient organization-effectiveness by employer, especially during talent attraction process. Leadership Traits continue being the tangible symbol of apparent corporate culture and advance candidate-journeys of/for hi-skilled talents to an advanced level.
Means: the key challenge for all hi-performing companies will be to continuously develop their existing leadership culture & upskill organisational effectiveness, while at the same time, providing utmost leeway to capable employees/leaders and controlled AI-tools. Clearly, this is a constant and demanding step-by-step evolution over years, in constantly adding vibrant skilled and competitive talent to the existing workforce – and make them perform in demanding organizations and projects.
3. Future of HR & Company Leadership
Workplace dynamics, rapid technology advancements and transformational agility in smart & effective work organizations will make Biz- and HR-leaders the key imperatives for any top-rated future company. In terms of productivity and organizational effectiveness of an empowered and fluid performance-company, the Human Resources-Function is the main CoE-driver of talent engagement and leadership development, plus bringing core activities to a significantly upgraded-level:
- Most of today´s HR-processes (e.g. hiring, org-structures, payroll, training, ER-branding) will be either completely redefined and changed by AI-tools, or completely gone, especially for admin- and lower value-add HR-processes.
- No doubt, Human Resources will clearly evolve into a strategic impacting biz-role during this transformational change-process. As matter of fact, the future of acqiring skilled talents become not only a strategic challenge for HRM´s by 2035, but requires the fundamental alignement of future Biz- with HR-Strategy on critical-impact level – plus deriving appropriate HR-activities and comfort-automated HR-processes.
- Constant skill-upgrading and real-time utilization of existing workforce & potential represent a big portion of future HR-duties – most likely driven by the workforce. Fully automated recruitment processes become essential in developping any future-performing organization capabilities. Today – a vast variety of HR-“tools” are on the AI-driven development way. Key IT-tools, AI-powered process-upgrading and smart HR-automation will deliver new process metrics & gap-closing activities – for HR and biz-leaders.
- Robust future engagement tools will utilize hybrid workforce/leader-learnings and innovative thinking processes (AI- or people-generated) real-time – to support vital recruitment processes and constant development of organisational effectiveness.
Means: the HR-function remains being the cornerstone and advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion, employee engagement, leadership effectiveness by using ethical AI-tools and adequate data privacy topics. AI literacy combined with a strong HR-leadership accumen becomes vital, to make HRM´s more impacting on the upgrade-journey of engaged talents and highly-effective organizations. The constant up- and re-skilling of workforce needs to take place even within winning HR-teams!
Despite this rough estimation of the talent acquisition & engagement landscape by 2035, we want to share some critical reflections & challenges on this future way of Recruitment:
- If AI-powered talent acquisition and fully-automated talent engagement is meant to be “the game-changer” for state-of-the-art companies, why do primarily IT-people & IT-consultants pray an AI-driven future as the only option to shape and survive any organization´s productivity, and rarely biz-proven HR-consultants?
- Human Resoruces supposed to be the passionate architects of any companies´ future talent & leadership effectiveness – and should pro-actively drive fast-pace processes by utilizing IT-automation & AI-driven methods for change execution. How does today´s HR-proficiency-level in most of companies and the enormous strategic change-ambitions go together – especially while biz-budgets are tight and biz-investments are shrinking?
- According to future HR-aspirations, our customers are frequented by a flood of AI-/Change/HR-consultants, utilizing narrow-banded IT-process tools for solving demanding strategic Biz-challenges? At the same time, strategic and overall transformational HR-work becomes short and short-term low-added projects are realized. How to overcome this big transformation – especially in small and medium-sized companies?
Well, there is a certain dis-balance between future company needs, AI/data-automated HR-processes and a huge work-load of rationalization topics, specifically across non-added HR-processes. However – key of pro-active strategic HR-leadership (including attracting, engaging and retaining talent/leaders) and future-proof development of smart HR-processes could only be a data-supported and AI-using change-process, by re-aligning future process-execution to biz-leaders – step-by-step. The implementation of new & smart HR-processes, like new talent attraction & engagement suites, become evident. Today, there is a huge disconnect in HR-process functionality and future talent engagement. The HR-function of companies (say up to 10.000 employees), remains being an underestimated Key Function to critical Company Success.
Conclusions:
- Companies, that anticipate or shape future trends of embracing AI, data automation and cultivate flexible workforce trends with future talent needs, will thrive the new talent attraction & engagement landscape of 2035+. Main drivers to achieve this massive transformation are strong biz-leaders, smart-skilled HR/IT functions and external consultants to support and implement the right HR-process, in the right pace, with biz-specific priorities – until selected metrics prove positive results by all stakeholders.
- Talents/Leaders are the core of any employer – now and in future. Human empathy, emotional intelligence and professional people-leadership will stay being the inert strategic accumen inside of any future-proven employer, period. The excitement of creating new eco-systems with tailor-made attraction & engagement tools will be the most evident leaders´role, to shape and define HR-ambassadors for achieving productivity gains for any successful organization or network in future.
- Charismatic Employer Branding and unique organizational leadership will attract, form and engage charismatic Talents/Leaders into highly fluid and flexible performance-teams of tomorrow. The HR-function of competitive future ecosystems will significantly morph into a strategic advisory role, shaping future organization effectiveness and pro-actively drive the organizational transformation & effectiveness of/with TALENTS by leaders and AI/automated processes. Moreover – HR leaders will be the pioneers of developping the competitive company´s future org-success, independent of organization size, talent market and leadership culture today.
Article written by Marc Steuer, CFR Global Executive Search Germany
Photo source: Unsplash