Quality of hire will become the defining recruitment metric as the proven ability to deliver outcomes takes on greater importance than either a candidate’s education or career history in hiring, according to a new report ‘Recruitment — 2022: The Effect of Social Media and Technology on Future Recruitment’.

Factors such as heightened technological connectivity, the economy and increased project-based and contingent work have been exerting significant impact on the recruitment landscape for some time. However, the report points out associated trends picking up pace that will further amplify the impact of these. They include fragmentation of both the workforce and roles themselves, and emphasis on outcomes-based hiring and reward.

And in news that recruiters will welcome, recruitment will become acknowledged as the most important HR process, the 44-page report predicts.

Commissioned by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s (REC’s) Technology Sector Group, it was researched by Belinda Johnson of WorkLab through interviews and third-party data. 

Sourcing and the current importance placed on being able to reach out to anyone on social media receive particular attention. Johnson puts forward veiled warnings that the connected population may rebel at some point by refusing to accept invitations to LinkIn with individuals or requests to ‘like’ companies especially if they do not want their contacts cannibalised or ‘scraped’ for someone else’s purposes. 

“When you can no longer apply the word ‘personal’ to the word ‘connections’, it will also be interesting to see to what extent connecting, ‘liking’ and following dries up,” Johnson said. “The only boundary is whether we want to continue to LinkIn, ‘like’, etc.”

Among the report’s conclusions:

• A person’s ‘social exhaust’, described as all that is retrievable from digital channels, will increasingly be pieced together to assess their potential impact.

• Knowledge and insight into who is best placed to deliver the outcomes required by hirers will increasingly come from the communities potential candidates actively participate in.

• Personality profiling will come to the fore.

• Communication and participation will become a high-skilled requirement within sourcing functions, possibly a spin-off in its own right.

• Professional communities will become ‘an inch wide and a mile deep’, reflecting the continuing rise of niche specialities and interests.

• The ability to source, distil, interpret and publish content will be king.