Tim Sackett’s Top 5 - A Mid-Year Trend Report

We're halfway through 2023 (crazy, right?!), so now seems like the perfect time to reflect on the top 5 trends that have shaped the year thus far. And who better to do it with than Tim Sackett, President of HRU Technical Resources & top 100 Global HR Tech Influencer?! During our July webinar, we sat down with Tim to discuss what’s trending today in the HR & talent acquisition space and what he sees as the trends that will continue into 2024 and beyond.

Check out the full 1-hour webinar below or read on for a brief synopsis of the 5 trends Tim presented.

It’s also been a year since we launched our webinar series with Tim himself, so now was the perfect time to celebrate our 1-year webinar-versary!

Now, let’s dive into the trends…

1.) Skills-Based Hiring

This is a trend that Tim believes shouldn’t actually be a trend, but all we hear about in the HR tech world is skills, skills, skills! If you think about how you were historically hired, it’s always been about what college you went to, what experience you had, etc., and at the end of the day, that left people who were equally skilled or more skilled without a fair shot at being hired.

Tim mentions hiring shouldn’t just be about skills, and it’s all about hiring the full person. You want somebody that can do the skills required for the role and you also want someone that comes with some great experience. If your executives are coming to you saying that they’ve been hearing a lot about skills-based hiring, you have to consider that it’s a lot of work and it’s a constantly moving target. So, Tim recommends starting small with one position before you dive deeper into all your roles.

2.) Fewer, Better Interviews

Tim introduced this trend by saying that if he was a CEO and you came to him saying there are 5+ interviews in your hiring process, he would fire you on the spot. There’s no reason for 5+ interviews! Both your candidates and Hiring Managers will hate you. There’s a direct correlation to the number of interviews and the success of the candidate as you should be able to get all the information you need out of 1 or 2 interviews. Tim believes there’s a diminishing return on the number of interviews you do.

When it comes to “better” interviews, Tim mentions you need to make sure your Hiring Managers are asking the right questions and the same questions from candidate to candidate. This way you’re getting more out of the interviews than you traditionally would so you can make better decisions. Interviews are more critical in tougher times and with smaller workforce plans because every hire becomes more important.

3.) State of Unemployment

Over the next 3-5 years, we’re going to be hurting for talent. The state of unemployment issue we have currently isn’t going away, and it’s probably going to get worse, especially as we lose 3M people per year to retirement. To mitigate this, Tim says that you need to keep everyone you can, and you have to continue to re-recruit every single person you have in your company.

4.) Artificial Intelligence (AI)

People are using AI more than they realize, and this is how it will impact our lives because it will become invisible to us. It’s going to be baked into the HR and talent acquisition systems and processes that we use without us even knowing, but it will make us more efficient in our roles.

One of the risks that continually comes up concerning AI is bias. Tim mentions that AI can actually audit bias better than a Hiring Manager can…because he himself can audit the AI, but he can’t audit what a Hiring Manager is saying in interviews, for example.

5.) Performance Management

This is a trend that no one’s talking about, but we need to be talking about it more! And a lot of that is due to the work-from-home shift. We have this push-and-pull issue with wanting really highly productive people but it’s also really hard to hire people.

Thanks to Tim for joining us! We always look forward to his insight, and It’s always a great time when we get to learn from one of the industry's most respected thought leaders.

Be on the lookout for our August webinar guest and topic announcement soon!