2024 is here and it’s going to be an unusual year for TA leaders and teams.
Last week, we did a webinar to review the changes that 2023 set in motion and what TA teams could expect to see starting in 2024. This is a quick recap.
Recap of what happened in 2023
The professional world entered 2023 on a bad note. The macro headwinds that started in the second half of 2022 got stronger in 2023. Funding fell sharply in 2023 and reached a level last seen before COVID-19.
In Jan 2023, we saw the highest number of layoffs, across all geos. The layoff fortunately kept reducing through over the months.
Job volume in 2023 dropped 80% for tech jobs, however, non-tech jobs also took a heavy beating.
This triggered the much-needed salary rationalization in the market after a very frothy 2021-22. Unlike random hikes being demanded and given earlier, in 2023 both the candidates and companies arrived at a fair salary hike range of around 30% to 50% by the end of 2023.
But here is a surprise – hiring didn’t become much easier still
From the above data points, it would seem that 2023 was an easier year to hire.
Yes, the joining ratios improved a bit. But in our survey and conversations, 50% of companies still said they didn’t find it any easier to hire in 2023.
There are several reasons for this, but the most important being – the talent got risk averse in 2023. Given the uncertainty and lesser salary hikes, many candidates either postponed their job switch plans or were cautious before switching their jobs.
What we can expect to see in 2024
Candidates are no longer deciding just based on salaries
Given the uncertainty and lesser salary hike expectations, candidates started ranking culture ahead of anything else while deciding a company to join:
Work from home is important to candidates, at least in tech
At the time when more and more companies are opening their offices, we continue to see a strong preference of tech talent for remote jobs.
Layoffs will reduce but the bigger thing will be the restructuring of jobs
As Nikunj wrote on LinkedIn, the layoffs have reduced but are now changing their colors.
Layoffs happening now are less due to cost reasons and more due to restructuring of jobs due to AI.
Hiring activity will see some recovery but major growth may only happen in the second half of 2024.
If Jan is any indication, job volumes have started picking up already. This is being indicated across Naukri, LinkedIn, and Cutshort too.
As funding opens up, especially at early stages, we can expect to see hiring picking up. As per CBInsights Q3 “state of venture” report, VCs in the USA are sitting on $283B waiting to be deployed into startups.
So, what does all this mean for TA teams in 2024?
2024 will be a year of unprecedented challenges and opportunities for TA leaders and teams.
Why? This is the only year, when TA teams will face changes in all the 4 areas of concern:
Here is a short explanation of these changes:
- Who you hire: As I mentioned above, AI is changing skillsets quite rapidly. Companies are currently figuring out the right mix of what they can expect AI to do and what they want humans to do. This is leading to many jobs being eliminated and many jobs needing different kind of skills.
- How you hire: As skills change, the way we hire is expected to change. A big impact here will also be created by AI polished resumes that will lead to failure of old heuristics based hiring.
- Higher expectations from business + new partners: As businesses try to increase productivity all around with AI, they will expect so much more from TA leaders in 2024. TA teams already are shorter and will need to become strategic to do justice to these expectations.
Forecasts for hiring process changes in 2024
AI screening tools will become very common in 2024
In 2024, with increasing number of applications and candidates using AI crafted resumes, companies will need a way to quickly sift through the candidate list. Current methods will just not be viable.
We expect fast adoption of AI screenings by companies to do this faster, better and cheaper. As an example, Cutshort now uses AI screeners for our customers using our newer managed models such as Lightning.
You can see a real AI screening session here.
If you are interested to try this AI screener for your own hiring – we can make it available to you at a super affordable price. Just request a callback and we’ll get in touch.
A better search will come to all mainstream platforms such as LinkedIn and Naukri
We expect platforms such as LinkedIn and Naukri tostart supporting simple “natural” search queries such as “Software Engineers with Python based web backend experience and a Frontend language like React”.
Such searches will help the recruiting teams find better fitting talent. If you want to try AI searches, you can try them on Cutshort here.
Assessments & Interviews will need to be rethought from the ground up
As companies redefine the job skills and candidates get new AI superpowers to solve assessments, there will be shuffle in the assessments and interviews companies are using today.
A company may allow use of AI to solve assessments or may need to change their take-home assignments.
TA leaders will start to offload their repetitive work to new partners
To become more productive and agile, TA leaders will start adopting new partners who can offer significant operational savings to them.
These “on-demand” services will manage everything. They will deploy a blend of humans and AI to do these tasks better, faster, and cheaper.
Such services are fast-emerging, with Angellist launching Recruiter cloud in the USA and Cutshort launching two offerings in India:
If you are a TA leader interested in making your TA team more strategic, you can request a callback here.
Summing up
With so many changes happening all the same time, 2024 will be a crucial year for TA leaders and teams.
The changes can make one nervous at first, but we believe these same changes are full of opportunities for TA leaders and companies that wanted to make their hiring more strategic but never got the time to do so.
