The document discusses trends in recruitment and talent acquisition that are expected in 2013. Some of the key trends highlighted are the growing dominance of mobile platforms in recruiting, LinkedIn becoming the primary recruiting tool, and more common use of online candidate assessments. It also mentions direct sourcing of currently employed top talent through social media becoming a primary focus for leading firms. The document concludes by stating the goal for 2013 is to become a preferred recruitment partner.

1. 2013: Recruitment & Talent acquisition – What’s in store?
Christmas is here, and the New Year is just a week away. Time it is to look back on all the learning’s of the past
year, and carry-on with more vigor, to hunt and hire the best talent for your organization.
And off course, we at Neptune HR Solutions are with you to help you – both strategically and in execution as
well.
It’s time for some thought leadership, to view into the future and see what trends shape our work, and how the
headlines will look for us.
We love to share it with you, as a part of our thought leadership initiatives.
How will the headlines look like in 2013? They are even less frequently implemented. At leading-edge firms
(like ours), you will see the following trends emerge.
Mobile dominates – the dominance of the mobile platform in recruiting will continue to grow. The best firms
will allow applicants to apply for jobs directly using only their mobile phone. A whole lot of startups will
intensify their development of recruiting-focused mobile phone apps.
LinkedIn becomes #1 in social media — LinkedIn will be used and eventually recognized as the primary
recruiting tool for attracting non-active prospects. The use of Twitter for recruiting will continue to grow, while
Facebook will begin to wane in the recruiting space.
Online candidate assessment becomes more common — in order to ensure that managers see only
candidate slates that exclusively contain high-quality candidates, more applicants for high-volume jobs will be
required to complete a brief but effective online technical knowledge and skill assessment test.
Recruiting follows other functions in quantifying its dollar impacts – as the pressure to demonstrate
business impacts expands to all overhead functions, recruiting will finally be forced to quantify its impacts on
revenue and its ROI. Recruiting will begin to report the positive rupee impact on corporate revenue as a result
of higher-performing hires, faster hiring, using the best sources more often (i.e. referrals), increasing diversity
hires, and having a strong employer brand.
Firms begin “mapping” their future talent pool – it has long been known that great recruiting functions are
proactive and forward looking. Leading firms will begin mapping top talent working at their competitors. They
will also use professional communities and continuous employee referrals to develop a talent pool of pre-
qualified top candidates for key jobs.
The focus on hiring innovators increases — the success of innovation-driven firms like Apple, Google, and
Facebook have demonstrated to executives the high economic impact of hiring, retaining, and managing
innovators. Hiring processes will begin to shift and become more data-driven, so that they can successfully
understand innovators and then recruit these unique high-value individuals who are rejected by most hiring
systems.
Direct sourcing becomes the primary focus — leading firms will begin a steady shift away from recruiting
―actives‖ (currently 60% – 90% of all candidates) and toward the direct sourcing of ―currently employed top
talent‖ using social media channels and social-media-driven employee referrals.
There are numerous current trends at leading organizations will continue to intensify next year.
 Referrals — will continue to produce the highest volume and highest quality of hires. The target
percentage of all hires from referrals at top firms will reach 50%.
 Live video interviewing — live video interviews will move from the experimental to become the
standard, at least for initial interviews.
 Sustainability — the slowly building expectation of sustainable business practices among employees
and candidates will eventually become an essential employer brand pillar.
 Retention impacts recruiting — the already increasing rates of turnover among highly desirable
employees will continue to the point where recruiting will have to be able to scale up its volume to fill
the vacancies.
 Candidate selling – the overall recruiting emphasis will continue to shift away from what is becoming
relatively easy — the ―finding‖ of candidates. Instead, there will be a shift toward the still difficult task of
successfully ―selling‖ top talent who are in high demand.
 Remote work — the growth of technology and the willingness of managers to accept remote work
options will dramatically expand recruiting for remote jobs. This shift will force recruiting to increase its
capability to find and land a higher percentage of candidates from around the world.
A talent search thought leadership series initiative of Neptune HR Solutions

2.  Volatility and workforce planning – as continuous business volatility becomes the ―new normal,‖
data-driven workforce planning will become an absolute requirement. In addition, the increased use
(approaching 40%) and the improved management of contingent workers will become essential to
provide the needed agility and flexibility.
 Recruiting at industry events — as the economy approves, industry events will return to popularity.
And once again recruiting at these events will become an essential and effective tool for recruiting top
and diverse talent.
 Personalized recruiting — although it is still currently rare, more organizations will attempt to
―personalize‖ their recruiting and target it to specific extremely high value targets.
Our goal for 2013 is to become a preferred recruitment partner for your organization.
A talent search thought leadership series initiative of Neptune HR Solutions