Wolfgang Brickwedde: Recruiting Trends for 2024

🎵It’s the most data-full time of the year!🎵

As we cap off another wild and wonderful 365 days in recruiting, all eyes are turned to social media for a list of the industry’s most actionable benchmarks, trends and insights. And you’ll probably want to check it twice.

Our CMO Sara Dalsfelt sat down just in time for an exclusive Adway Live with the Institute For Competitive Recruiting (ICR)’s Wolfgang Brickwedde — a trailblazer in revolutionising recruitment processes and driving innovation in TA, and your go-to expert for navigating the ever-evolving landscape of recruitment and employer branding.

Not only did Wolfgang share a sneak peek of the insights from the upcoming "Recruiting Trends Conference” in March 2024, but he also debuted:

🔎 Key highlights from Recruiting Benchmarks 2023
🔎 An exclusive preview of Recruiting Trends 2024
🔎 Benchmark Data - How senior recruiters benefit from benchmarking
🔎 Insights into challenges, talent attraction, tools and social media channels
🔎 Global Insights - Lessons for talent acquisition professionals worldwide

Watch Wolfgang and Sara dive into this year’s most-waited-for topic:

For a supercharged summary of the most insightful takeaways, keep reading.

It’s time to find out what we learned from TA in 2023, and how we can use it to our full advantage in 2024.

Why Recruiting Trends & Benchmarks Matter

While we all have our reasons for wanting to unbox the latest recruitment industry trends and insights, it’s still worth asking the question: “sure, but why?”

There’s infinite value for senior recruiters and heads of TA in having access to the benchmarks we break down below. By knowing what’s actually working in different regions, you can remove the guesswork from your recruiting operations and improve your own ways of working right where you are.

In the case of recruiting insights, knowledge really is power. It’s the difference between advancing from all the data and technology and simply letting it sit in the dust.

Unveiling the Insights

The insights from the Institute For Competitive Recruiting (ICR) Recruiting Report were collected through a survey of 3,500+ senior recruiters and TA heads throughout the DACH region (Germany, Austria & Switzerland). They offer priceless strategic takeaways and best practices for TA professionals worldwide.

From highlighting today’s biggest recruitment challenges to the most effective tech and tools for attracting candidates, this report provides recruiting relevance (and then some) on a global scale.

The Most Important Topics For Recruitment in DACH in 2024

Employer Branding
Recruiting of Experienced Professionals
Applicant Market
Social Media Recruiting (is the shooting star!)
Candidate Experience
Digitisation of Recruiting
Professionalisation of Recruiting
Active Sourcing
Staff Development
Applicant Management Systems

The Most Important Topics For Recruitment in the UK in 2024

Candidate Experience
Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
EVP & Employer Brand
Data & Metrics
Automation/AI
Talent Pooling & Pipeline Management
Onboarding
Strategic Workforce Planning
Screening, Selection & Assessment
Recruitment/ TA Technology
Internal Mobility
Early Careers
Contingent Labour
Executive Search

TA is no stranger to the above topics. They’ve been on our collective radar for a very long time. Still, most TA professionals simply don’t have the bandwidth to tackle them all — which is why
smarter automation is more crucial than ever as we move into 2024.

With automation removing the tedious, time-consuming to-do’s from recruiting,
candidate experience can finally get the attention it needs as TA’s top KPI.

This winning dynamic has always been on our radar at Adway, which is why we created our Talent Attraction Suite, with candidate experience being one of our core products.

The Most Widely Used Recruitment Technology in DACH

ATS
Software for Searching for Applicants
Multi-job Posting Solutions
Social Media Management Solutions
Video Interview Solutions (e.g. Cammio, Viasto, not Skype)
Mobile Recruiting Solutions
Employer Branding Services
Candidate Selection/Assessment Software
Performance Job Posting
Employee Referral Platforms
Onboarding Software
Candidate Relationship Management Software
AI (In Various Tools)
Programmatic Job Advertising
Talent Search Engines
Chatbots

Believe it or not, the data shows: even with the massive array of recruitment technology mentioned above, only 50% of employers use 3 or more RecTech tools! That’s still a shocking number of companies who aren’t taking advantage of TA tech.

The 2023 Budget For Employer Branding

According to the ICR Recruiting Report, nearly 50% of employers have a budget of less than €20,000 for employer branding. And, while one German company had an employer branding budget of €40 million, 19% of the employers surveyed had no budget at all.

In the wake of Covid-19, employer branding budgets saw a significant decrease as employers found themselves at an uncertain standstill. But, in the last two years, spending on employer branding has bounced back well above pre-pandemic levels.

When it comes to building a sustainable social talent pool, we at Adway believe that investing in your employer branding efforts is one of the best ways to optimise your overall budget. Regardless of the size of your recruiting budget, investing in your employer brand will make your budget work smarter for you.

Why so? If you don’t invest today, you’re already out of the game. That’s because you’ll need even more resources next year to make up for all the candidates you’ve lost in the pipeline. Employer branding is exponential. Even with a tiny budget, it’s essential to invest in your employer branding efforts year over year.

The 2023 Budget For Recruitment Marketing

When it comes to the overall recruitment marketing budget, 31% of employers have a budget of less than €20,000, with 12% having no budget at all.

On the other end of the spectrum, 19% of employers have a recruitment marketing budget < €20,000, 17% of employers have a recruitment marketing budget of €20,000 - €50,000 and 9% of employers have a budget of €100,000- €200,000.

The Big Question: What Will The 2023 Budget be Spent On?

Social Media Business Networks (LinkedIn, Xing, etc.) (51%)
Job boards (46%)
Social Media Social Networks (Facebook, X, etc.) (31%)
Employee Referrals (30%)
Agencies (26%)
Trade Fairs (University, Industry, Specialist)(25%)
Job Advertisements in Print Media (13%)
Job Advertisements on Our Own Career Site (12%)
External Sourcing Service Providers (11%)
Outsourced Recruiting (7%)
CV Databases (6%)
Internal Applicants (5%)
Federal Employment Agency (1%)

It’s no surprise that both social media business networks and social media social networks are sitting in the top 3 of the 2023 recruiting budget.

Investing in social media gives you the best of both worlds: it builds your employer brand and your social talent pool.

Where Do The Applications Come From?

Online Job Boards (35%)
Job Advertisements on Own Career Site (21%)
Social Media Business Networks (20%)
Employee Recommendations (14%)
Personnel Consultancies (10%)
Internal Applicants (10%)
Social Media Social Networks (8%)
Federal Employment Agency (6%)
External Sourcing Service Providers (6%)
Trade Fairs (University, Industry, Specialist) (5%)
CV Databases (4%)
Job Advertisements Print Media (4%)
Outsourced Recruiting (4%)

Where Do The New Hires Come From in DACH?

Job Advertisements on Online Job Boards (34%)
Social Media Business Networks (23%)
Job Advertisements on Own Career Page (22%)
Employee Recommendations (19%)
Personnel Consultancies (14%)
Internal Applicants (13%)
Social Media Social Networks (9%)
External Sourcing Service Providers (7%)
Federal Employment Agency (7%)
CV Databases (7%)
Outsourced Recruiting (6%)
Trade Fairs (University, Industry, Specialist) (6%)
Job Advertisement Print Media (5%)

When looking at the two trends above - sourcing of applications versus sourcing of new hires - a large number of applications are coming from job boards, while the majority of new hires are coming from social media.

So, what’s that all about?

ICR has noticed a dramatic shift in the last two years, with social media as the “shooting star” for sourcing all the way through the candidate experience, suggesting a definite need for investing in social media in your 2024 recruitment budget.

In fact, 3x more hires are realised via social media in 2023 (when compared to 2013).

This is why the leading TA teams across the world are investing in TA tech for social media recruitment. What other platform would host nearly 5 billion potential candidates per day?

At Adway, we aggregate the right, relevant data from the most visited social media networks, so you can optimise your talent acquisition strategy with a multi-channel social recruiting approach.

Questions From the Audience

"Do you think social media effectiveness will double again in another ten years?"

It’s almost certain!

With visitors growing and an increasing ability to reach your target audience right where they are, the sky’s the limit when it comes to social recruiting trends in 2034!

But remember: don’t put all your eggs in one social media recruiting channel (we’re looking at you LinkedIn!).

"What do you expect the forecast for recruiting trends to look like in the next 3-5 years?"

More Automation (and hopefully it’s being used the right way): That means looking at your recruitment process from the candidate side (not the vendor side!) and deciding which parts can be automated without detracting you from a high-touch, personalised and sophisticated approach.

Skill-Based Recruiting: A clear shift away from hiring for job titles and instead seeking candidates with transferable skills. For example: if your job description is asking for X years of experience for a software developer, that real life experience is more valuable than the certification that shows they “can.” A certification doesn’t guarantee great performance.

Upskilling: Will be essential for both external candidates and internal personnel who are moving along their career paths (particularly in a scarcity market).

Top Two Takeaways

1. Use technology. Use it wisely. And use it for candidates, not just recruiters.

2. Be high-tech, so you can be high-touch.

At Adway, we couldn’t agree more. That’s why we’re on a mission to solve the world’s greatest hiring challenges through technology. Whether you’re a seasoned TA tech adopter or still in the early stages of researching what will help you meet your recruiting goals, we can show you what’s possible (and much more).

Try us out with a free demo today.

Book a demo

Register For the Recruiting Trends 2024 Online Conference

There’s still time to register for the March 18-21 Recruiting Trends 2024 Online Conference, where you can get even more benchmarks, trends and insights from ICR.

Click here for a free ticket worth 299€:

Your free ticket!

You can also preorder the free ICR Recruiting Trends & Benchmark 2024 report in English by clicking here:

ICR Recruiting Trends & Benchmark 2024 report