Employers
on November 05, 2020 / by Dasro

Top three IT recruitment trends in Canada for 2020

In the age of social distancing and remote work, recruiting top IT talent hasn’t gotten any easier for Canadian and international businesses. This year was marked by a significant shift in recruitment with companies and agencies looking to adapt and adjust in a disrupted economy. 

 

The biggest winners without a doubt was technology (software) designed to facilitate remote hiring processes.

 

In this article, we discuss the main IT recruitment trends affecting Canadian businesses in 2020.


Natural Language Processing and Predictive Analytics

A rapidly growing trend in candidate screening for IT recruiting firms is the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) helping hiring managers cut down on the amount of time needed to match the best candidates with any role. NLP (Natural Language Processing) reduces the amount of time required to screen a high volume of resumes and by analyzing the potential employee's engagement, increasing accuracy when matching applicants with complex IT jobs.

 

Natural Language Processing, combined with Predictive Analytics, is revolutionizing the early stages of the recruitment process in the IT sector and beyond. Predictive Analytics allows the identification of best possible employees, based on a diverse range of parameters that include location, past experience, education and relationship networks. 

 

With the hiring process becoming increasingly driven by technology and artificial intelligence, recruitment teams need to acquire a new set of skills to make the most of AI software and capitalize on the benefits presented by Natural Language Processing and Predictive Analytics.

 

Some of the fastest growing software applications using artificial intelligence to automate the recruitment process include:

1) My Ally, an AI Talent Lifecycle Management solution for fully Automated Candidate Sourcing.

2) Paradox, the AI assistant to help screen candidates, schedule interviews, answer questions and more.

3) AllyO, and AI automation software to help qualify candidates, automating recruiting processes.

 

Employment branding

It is no secret that best-known brands tend to get top IT talent, and this is not just to do with salary considerations.

While branding is a strategic prerogative of the marketing department, there is a lot you can do in the recruitment process to project the best brand image to candidates, especially in the first stages of the application journey. Shortening the application forms and having a well-defined job description are two simple steps that hiring managers can implement quickly and without any significant investment.

 

An additional step to help with employer's branding is to highlight what makes your company different from the rest (try to stand out) and this can be achieved by highlighting your company’s culture as well as values.

 

This is especially true if you are recruiting from a cohort of applicants in the millennial age group. Staff members in the age group between 25 and 35 are especially motivated and interested in knowing their employers share similar values and cultures and recruiters need to be open and proactive about their mission and value statement.

 

Airbnb is a brand that has had great success in hiring IT talent over the years and Mark Levy, the Former Head of Employee Experience at Airbnb and Allbirds, once said: "Employee experience is about doing things with and for your employees, not to them".

 

Internal and inbound recruitment

Hiring strong IT candidates is a resource-intensive process, and internal recruitment is one of the most efficient forms of finding the best candidate for your IT role. Internal recruitment (or inbound recruiting) can be executed in different ways, and one of the best techniques is by filling the roles from existing employees that are currently either in another team or department. This has become a growing trend with over 70% of hiring managers stating in a LinkedIn survey, that internal recruiting is increasingly vital to their company. Internal hiring provides significant benefits, but above all, it improves retention, reduces new hiring costs, and expedites the hiring process.

 

IT recruitment as competitive as ever

While changes and uncertainty are affecting all industry sectors IT recruitment remains as competitive as ever. Businesses in Canada and beyond are investing in digitalization and looking to bolster their IT departments to compete in a difficult economic cycle.



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