Another year of HR Tech has come and gone. Here are five of our biggest takeaways from HR Tech 2019:
1. Candidate experience is driving a lot of tech advancements
It’s safe to say that we’ve been in a candidate-driven hiring market for several years now, and one of the biggest consequences is a heightened focus on candidate experience. And at HR Tech, we’re now seeing more and more technology solutions being developed exclusively with candidate experience in mind. Employers are increasingly driven to find ways to stand out to candidates by optimizing the entire hiring process, and technology is poised to fill in some of the gaps. This includes technology solutions designed to make the application process as smooth and painless as possible, or tech designed to help you speed up the hiring process so that you don’t lose out on your top candidates.
2. Gamification is one of the hottest new ways to improve candidate experience
One of the biggest technology developments designed to improve the candidate process: gamification. This includes gamification of the hiring process in general by creating game-like incentives, and it also includes game-based assessments for evaluating candidates in the early stages of the hiring funnel. The takeaway is that organizations are getting more creative about how to transform the application process from painful and tedious, to fun and engaging.
3. AI is now accepted in HR
For a long time, Artificial Intelligence has been a source of fear and anxiety for HR, specifically because of how “human” the HR function is. But based on the landscape at HR Tech 2019, AI has gone from “scary” to “necessary.” This new openness to leveraging AI in HR likely stems from the growing awareness of concepts like unconscious bias, which makes it difficult for well-meaning HR professionals to hire objectively. This acceptance of AI is really about the willingness to supplement our human ideas with more data-driven ones and relying on technology to make that happen.
4. Technology is being used to improve sourcing
When candidates are scarce, recruiters and hiring managers often turn to sourcing as a way to drive more of the right types of candidates through the door. And technology can be used to optimize the sourcing process, making it easier to evaluate the effectiveness of different sources, to decide where to invest more time and energy, and to determine how to reach the right audience of job candidates.
5. Technology is making it easier to manage increasingly creative perks and benefits
With today’s talent war, employers are increasingly adding to their “perks and benefits” stack in order to attract the best candidates. From innovative new fitness perks, fertility benefits, free food, and childcare, companies are getting creative about how they put together benefits packages. But managing these perks and benefits can be extremely complicated and time-consuming. Technology is poised to provide solutions for delivering unique perk options and making it easier on the HR department to organize and track them.
