Recruitment Expo 2018

Earlier this month I attended the Recruitment Expo at the NEC in Birmingham – it was a thought-provoking event with some fantastic speakers sharing ideas, trends and future predictions of where the industry is going.

This year the message was clear: technological advancements and digital transformations are disrupting the industry. Get on board with the digital world or become obsolete: “By 2020, 30% of new revenue will be driven by digital transformation business models.”

I attended the conference equipped with business cards and ready to collect, however, the name badges given had barcodes which were scanned and automatically emailed information across. This raised the question, will business cards become out-dated sooner than we thought?

The tech industry is growing by 40-60% per annum, there have been heaps of products that have already come and gone, numerous just entering and plenty currently being developed.

The main challenge businesses are faced with is selecting the right product that will last in this forever advancing digital world and not be a short-lived trend. We’ve seen the Blackberry craze be over-taken by I-Phones, smartphones eliminating the need for a digital camera, MP3 player, map or torch and services such as Netflix and Sky eradicating the need for a DVD player. The print industry is one to watch: will we still be buying newspapers when we can access all information instantly on our laptops/phones?

We as a population are getting lazy, nobody wants to read or even write or type! Pieces of tech like ‘Google Home’ or ‘Amazon Alexa’ are allowing us to voice questions and have the programme research and speak the answer. There are even developments being released for programmes to order take-aways or book appointments which have the intelligence to deal with unforeseen requests. For the recruitment industry, the question is, how will people be applying for jobs in the future? Will paper CV’s and resumes soon become obsolete?

The recruitment industry has a mass of opportunities to improve the candidate experience and advance the service to clients. We understand our clients want quality, speed and most importantly fulfillment. We are always researching to ensure we’re aware of products available and investing in the right platforms to ensure we are equipped to continue to deliver an unrivaled level of service which overcomes recruitment challenges effectively and efficiently.

The number of different solutions, services, and products available is vast and seeing them all in one room at the conference was slightly daunting, but clearly demonstrated the volume of tools on the market to drive businesses forward. Technology needs to be embraced to benefit from the opportunities and gain speed, agility and accuracy in recruitment processes, and most importantly, stay relevant.

I left the event filled with ideas and motivated to re-vamp some of our marketing strategies and introduce new campaigns. Thanks to all the speakers, it really was a fantastic event – already looking forward to next year!