- To be an effective job seeker and give yourself a strong chance of getting a job you have to keep on top of today’s job hiring trends.
- The last job you had in business in which you worked may have changed between when you first landed the job to where you are now with your career.
- Check out this article to find out what trends, new styles, and/or additions hiring managers, businesses and firms alike expect from this new year’s crop of new employees.
Job seekers within both the small and large business market realize that from one year to the next, the hiring atmosphere never remains the same. Economic pressure, ebbs and flows within the job market, renewed or new taxation, and even government policies regarding international and national trade, can have a strong bearing on who is and who is not deemed adequate to pair with a company’s open positions.
The fact is, attempting to forecast the job market with the arrival of a new year can be even more difficult. As a job seeker, you wonder if your area of interest will flourish with open positions, or lock itself down because of an impacted job field.
Trends, these days, are what determines the job market. And with that, it is absolutely imperative that job seekers stay ahead of those trends. Because as hiring trends go, so do job trends.
Whereas one corporate position might have had a defined list of obligations for one year, that list of obligations may change the following year. Tasks may have been added to or subtracted from the dream position a job seeker searches for within the job market.
Given this, a successful job seeker knows to look for tell-tale signs regarding changes in their job market. For example, a technology manager’s position within a firm may have transformed from one year to the following year in which they now must know how to:
- Write – a new software rollout is scheduled for a company’s first quarter, and because of this, the tech manager will need to know how to write aggressive use cases to test the new operating system’s viability.
- Communicate – because that technology manager will need to know how to explain the variances of the new software to employees affected by the change so that they can quickly become familiar with and utilize to their best abilities, those differences.
- Manage a larger, more complex staff – with additional employees in a company’s department due to an expansion of a particular job (the above-mentioned rollout, for example) that this time one year earlier, was nowhere near as involved, complex or detail-oriented.
From a technology manager to a technology manager with additional skills in writing and communication, many in the job market are unable to see this change in the forest if not for the trees. The serious job seeker, however, is privy to all of these changes.
Why? They study the job market. They know what the upcoming trends are. They’ve been around the block a few times only to realize that the best way to get ahead in this job market is to know the market itself, know how the market will change and forecast what impact that market change will have on hiring.
In short, the serious job seeker comes prepared, as should everyone else who’s out there, emailing resumes, hiring recruiters, or simply going after the tried-and-true action of pounding the bricks from one job opening to the next.
The following six examples reveal many of the trend indicators job seekers look for to understand how their job has changed, and what they have to do to positively affect those changes in their favor.
- Listen/Read the News
It may seem oversimplified, but by staying up with the news, particularly the financial news, a job seeker will have a wealth of knowledge that can determine what they will need to be aware of in a new year’s job market.
The news forecasts industries that will and will not do well, in addition to explaining why they may or may not do well. The news will give insight into what industries should be avoided, and what others should be sought after by those looking for work.
Just as well, innovation can play a large part in a job seeker’s marketability, which, when revealed, will give that job seeker a heads up as to what he or she will need to add or change within their work curriculum to stay ready for that position.
- Understand the New Competition in the Job Market
As a job seeker, you may notice a difference in other seekers from the last time you looked for a job. Should you interact with any of them, especially during the hiring process, you might perceive that the candidates are wiser, more confident, or have a broader body of knowledge than you remembered from back when you first attempted to get into this marketplace.
They know new programs or software that feeds directly into their/your type of work. Maybe some have taken classes that at first glance, aren’t even remotely connected with what the job is about. However, once you think about it, you might decide that you should have taken those same classes, or learned that same software if only to give yourself a fighting chance to nail down the job for which you applied.
A major part of being a serious, dedicated, and more importantly, a successful job seeker, is to know how to make yourself more appealing to those who hire, such as recruiters, hiring managers all the way up to senior management. In this day and age, employers want employees who have a wide berth of knowledge that can be applied to the job of their choosing.
Of course, the only way to do this is to stay actively involved in one’s profession. Monitor your profession’s influence within the sector for which you work. Keep apprised about what has changed as well as what will change, and how those changes can be applied positively toward the job and department that you are applying to.
Knowing this information can give you a leg up on the competition that stands between you and the job you seek.
- Understand the New Hiring Process
New jobs or existing jobs that have new task-specific aspects assigned to them can dramatically alter an already known hiring process. In other words, job seekers will more than likely experience changes in how they are interviewed, and if lucky, how they are hired due to changes in the position for which they are applying.
A prospective candidate might now have to take certain tests or go through a barrage of other “examinations” to convince hiring managers that Person A is better for the job than Person B.
There is also the chance that current job candidates may not interface at all with a human recruiter until later in the interview process.
For example, artificial intelligence (AI) plays an ever-growing role in job placement. It’s for this reason that according to a recent article appearing on Chameleon Resumes, candidates should prepare to first interface with robots during their hiring process.
As the article states, artificial intelligence and automation are already used by human resources departments, this due to HR tech becoming more prominent in initial screening efforts, streamlining those efforts to produce more viable interview candidates in a shorter period of time.
Because of this, candidates should prepare to schedule interviews from auto-generated responders, and with that, ready themselves to reply to initial screening questions while in conversation with what is more likely a robot, as well as take automated company culture assessments—before they ever talk to a human recruiter.
For the job seeker, these assessments may come in the guise of an online questionnaire or assessments can be taken during a live chat with a bot that is a product of AI.
It’s the future of hiring, and the sooner job seekers prepare for it, the better that preparation will be toward landing their desired position.
- Don’t Fight the (Robotic) Power
Job seekers may not like the techy this-and-that which now pervades the act of job hiring. They may think this most recent hiring process is too impersonal, and/or objective, and with that, fails to take into account the more “human” aspects of their job ability, cultural expectations, and workplace personality.
The problem with that, however, is hiring managers don’t really care what job seekers like or dislike about a company’s hiring process; having most of the recruitment tasks done by AI allows for both accurate identification of good candidates and a freeing-up of the human recruiter’s time for other tasks.
While Chameleon Resumes revealed that job seekers selected by robots tend to last longer than human-chosen hires, Personnel Today bolsters that fact in a study sponsored by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research in which it states, “Workers chosen by a computer algorithm stayed in their role 15% longer than those chosen by human recruiters and managers.”
Of course, companies are catching on to this idea, and while there are some job seekers and hiring managers alike who attempt to circumvent the HR bot and challenge to get a candidate hired faster, this throwdown of shields and swords against AI in hiring could end up being a detriment to career advancement in the long run.
This is why it is important for every careerist to improve their tech skills, particularly in automation communication.
As the Chameleon Resume article suggests, now that we have learned how to communicate effectively over the phone, direct mail, fax, email, and video, communicating over robot automation is now the next skill set to master.
- Humanity Will Come Later
While AI continues its influence on the job market, even to the point that it is making hiring more efficient, one aspect of hiring that still can’t be replaced is the human aspect.
Sure, a robot may first receive and sort out resumes, state a few perfunctory facts about the job, then ask a few perfunctory questions as to your abilities to handle the job, and from that point forward, determine whether your resume goes in the “yes” or “no” pile, but honestly, that’s about all AI can do.
And yes, as it is a cold and impartial procedure in which a computer program deems if you are fit or unfit for the job – and as we all know from many a science fiction movie that machines do have a penchant to break down or make poor character judgments on the hiring front, the hiring robot’s presence is here to stay.
However, as you advance in the hiring process, exceeding one level to the next, a real, honest and true human recruiter will soon face off against you across an office desk. This can mean two immediate and positive issues in the case of you getting your dream job:
- You’ve exceeded the robot level – that is you’ve gone beyond its abilities to continue with the hiring process, and now the robot has to hand over your hiring case to a real person. While it may not seem like much, this is a triumphant ascension to you potentially being hired.
- Hiring officials recognize that you have succeeded in the interview process (thus far), and now believe you deserve some good old fashioned human interaction as opposed to some objective computer software within a rock-stupid robot server.
Just know that in today’s hiring process, once you’ve come to the point where humans suddenly decide they want to meet you – and not technology – you’re in the final stretch of your interviews.
Sure, AI may have infiltrated the hiring process, but the nitty-gritty of getting a job still comes down to a strong and undeniable human aspect.
- Civilize Your Social Media
Want to know what a job seeker’s strongest challenge may be in their search for a job? Yep, that’s it: Social media. Time and again, we’ve warned readers of this oversight by job candidates; those who do not double and triple check their LinkedIn and Facebook profiles.
In short, if there’s anything of yours remotely controversial in either one of those online outlets – and the hiring managers with whom you interviewed find those controversies out – your chances of getting your next job with a respectable entity are next to zilch.
As a job seeker, you should instead fashion your online profiles so that they positively represent you. But don’t overload your profiles (in fact, leave your FB profile out of this. Job searching is serious business, and Facebook is anything but a serious job recruiting tool).
List only important and relevant accomplishments in your LinkedIn profile. They should be achievements that directly correlate with the job you are seeking. Use these accomplishments to bolster your candidacy and prove to the next (human) recruiter you encounter during your job search that you are relevant to their open position.
The kitchen sink resumes are dead and gone according to Chameleon Resumes. Furthermore, hiring managers are known to have incredibly short attention spans. They do not want to be overwhelmed with everything a candidate can do or has done.
All a recruiter or hiring manager wants to know past your name and possibly your address is whether or not you can do for them what they need to be done, and how, either through your resume or your LinkedIn profile you can prove to have the ability to perform the job at hand.
In Conclusion
Finding a job is challenging, no doubt about it. But with adequate preparation that mirrors today’s contemporary hiring process, doors that you’ve known in addition to doors you may not have even considered regarding your career will open up.
Just give yourself a chance by knowing the job market and its candidates change almost on a yearly basis, which makes your job before you finally get your job a matter of preparation so that you can come out on top of not just the recruiting robots, but the other recruits as well.
See the following articles for more information:
- The Importance of a Positive Mindset during Your Job Search
- The Best Cities for Job Seekers: What Cities Are Trending and How to Expand Your Search
- Why You Should Change Jobs Every 3 to 5 Years
