September 19th, 2017 | Sterling

HR Trends from In-House Recruitment Live!

It’s hard to believe that In-House Recruitment Live! was just a few weeks back. The Sterling team was in full force championing the simplicity of our background screening platform in London. The Sterling exhibition stand was busy all day with delegates wanting to discuss their screening challenges and noticeably from some who were looking to relieve the pressure on their department by outsourcing background screening to a third party. We would like to thank everyone for taking time out of their busy conference schedule to stop by our stand, share ideas and feedback with our team. Sterling’s goal is to help companies hire with confidence by offering a simpler, smarter, background screening experience.

Highlights and Trends from In-House Recruitment Live!

There were over 1,000 attendees at In-House Recruitment Live! in London on 5^th September. The event had 46 exhibitors and 30 speakers who shared the latest human resources trends such as the candidate experience, social recruiting, tips for attracting the best talent, building a great employer brand, new technologies that will help the recruiting process and how to stay compliant with employment laws and the changes coming due to the GDPR.  According to the event organisers, “This ever-successful event continues to inspire, innovate and empower every in-house recruiter to achieve their goals.”

Some key takeaways from the comprehensive conference and exhibition included:

• Information Overload: Recruiters need to be more creative in trying to connect to future candidates. Job seekers are inundated with tens of templated job listing emails per day. Recruiters need to set themselves apart to “snag” their perfect candidate.
• Talent pipelines can cut the hiring time by 50%: According to Paul Slezak, a speaker at this year’s In-House Recruitment Live! who blogged his insights from the event, “Building a talent pipeline should be high on the roadmap for any organisation looking to shift from a reactive recruitment model to a more proactive talent acquisition model.”
• The importance of candidate experience: Candidate experience (both negative and positive) can impact business. Negative candidate experiences potentially impact the employment brand and direct revenue for consumer-based businesses but also diminish their ability to attract sought-after talent and the referral networks that come with them. 41% of job seekers who give their overall candidate experience a negative rating will take their relationships elsewhere, while 64% of job seekers who give their overall candidate experience a positive rating will increase their employer

The Technology Factor – Social Media Screening

Technology was a key theme throughout the day. There were high-profile sessions lead by leaders from Mervyn Dinnen, Google and Microsoft. Steve Smith of Sterling presented “Social Media Background Screening: Risks and Rewards.” The standing room only speech by Steve Smith reflected the fact that more and more employers are turning to social media screening as a way of checking a candidate’s character that can’t be learned from a CV or even from an interview.

“It was clear from those in the room-and from surveys in the past that there is a degree of nervousness about social media screening regarding what employers can and can’t do,” Steve Smith explained. “By checking candidate social media profiles, in-house recruiters can expose themselves to all sorts of protected characteristics and so they can find themselves basing hiring decisions on information they simply shouldn’t be aware of. Fortunately, there are some clear steps to mitigating compliance risk while benefiting from the insight social media profiles can provide.”

With social media screening becoming more prevalent in the hiring process, it is very important that employers develop a clear policy towards the use of social media for recruitment purposes. Companies should have a background screening policy in place to help document compliance and the hiring process. There are risks and rewards for a company that performs social media screening, find out what these are and much more in the On Demand version of our webinar from earlier this year, “Social media Background Screening: Risks and Rewards.”

Looking Ahead to Next Year’s In-House Recruitment Live!

Working with thousands of clients, Sterling’s big ideas leverage technology to define industry standards, streamline complex processes and provide clients with hiring peace of mind. Sterling is looking forward to next year’s event, but in the meantime, contact us for more information about how social media checks can be integrated as part of a wider background screening programme and how to avoid compliance pitfalls in the process.

This publication is for informational purposes only and nothing contained in it should be construed as legal advice. We expressly disclaim any warranty or responsibility for damages arising out this information. We encourage you to consult with legal counsel regarding your specific needs. We do not undertake any duty to update previously posted materials.