Stacie Wilk formerly served as managing director of technology practice at Westport International in Greenville, SC. In 2015, Stacie Wilk moved from Greenville to Palo Alto, California, where she works as an executive recruiter with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The field of talent acquisition is changing rapidly, and 2017 has witnessed a number of new trends.
For example, there is a greater emphasis on machine learning in figuring out how to advertise positions and search for particular skills. Recruiters rarely use the same search keywords to find candidates online that candidates would use to describe themselves. Becoming an expert on all the ways to describe a particular skill is not feasible, and this is why more and more HR professionals are turning to tools with semantic search features that can do the translations themselves.
Recruiters are also making greater use of A/B testing to figure out how the hiring process itself affects the end result. For example, do videos in job postings make more people apply? Does reducing the number of screening questions result in a more diverse body of potential hires?
New techniques for minimizing hiring bias are also becoming popular. As research from Forbes and Harvard Business Review show, unconscious bias is virtually unavoidable. Some solutions include blind and anonymous recruiting techniques or implementing problem-solving talent acquisition processes in lieu of traditional resumes.
