And recruitment and HR leaders must begin to address all three now, Gartner advised the audience.

On Monday [11 September 2023], Gartner principal analyst Emi Chiba prefaced her explanation of the trends by reminding listeners that next year’s trends have their roots in what is happening now. “With trends, they don’t ‘poof’, come out of nowhere,” she said. Right now, she added, recruitment technology is “highly visible, and it is growing in importance… There is so much in the market; it’s hard to cut through the noise”.

Chiba was speaking at Gartner’s two-day Reimagine HR Conference for EMEA chief human resource officers, drawing attendees from continental Europe and the Middle East.

“This year, recruiting has been focused on leveraging new technology investments for talent attraction and engagement, enabling more streamlined worker transitions” and “lots of market consolidation”, Chiba said. Buying cycles for rec tech have been elongated in 2023 “as general uncertainty in the market led to increased scrutiny of the business case for talent acquisition tech transformation”, she noted.

These trends will “evolve” but the three new ones in 2024 are crucial for recruitment and HR leadership to understand and deal with.

They are:

• Generative AI hype will serve as “a larger tipping point” to determine how to best use AI in recruitment.
• Amplified regulations will lead organisations to be more vigilant.
• Drawn-out buying cycles will heighten the need to conduct more due diligence about purchases, she said: “There will be a heightened need for ‘buyer beware’.” Vendors of recruitment tech will be adding to their offerings, and buyers must understand what they want and need in their purchases; new product tech may not be necessary for what needs to be done most efficiently and effectively,” Chiba said. Vendors are “racing to add AI or Gen AI capabilities because of longer buying cycles” to maintain their bottom lines, she said. At the same time, buyers often “don’t know where AI will provide most value”. 

Chiba further urged the audience to “avoid paralysis” as they look to position themselves for agility in a “more unknown future”.

“Identify opportunities,” she said. “Work them into your strategic roadmap. Execute. Feedback loop monitor. Tag key areas to be vigilant in consistently evaluating.”

The “biggest take-away” for recruitment and HR leaders, she warned, is to consider “how we (they) will extract value. Be very intentional about what you want” and consider how they will measure success and “hard vs. soft requirements”. 

The conference continues today [12 September] at the Intercontinental Hotel at the O2.

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