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The Business Case for AI in HR

There’s no question that artificial intelligence (AI) is on the lips of every business leader today. How will it affect the business and employees? How should I deploy it and in what areas of my business?

Deployed in HR, artificial intelligence can help identify the best candidates for the job, quickly and easily provide information on a company to prospective employees, identify skills gaps and recommend training options, and even help identify when employees are unhappy and might leave.

Join this IBM webinar to find out more about how AI in HR is becoming embedded in the recruitment process, speeds up hiring by quickly identifying the best candidates, and by removing bias, improves the matching between candidates and job role. AI can save time and money, improve employee engagement and makes sure prospective employees have a career path in a role they love.

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Speakers

Nigel Guenole – author of ‘The Business Case for AI in HR’

IBM Occupational psychologist Nigel Guenole, Ph.D. is an Executive Consultant with the IBM Smarter Workforce Institute and a Senior Lecturer in Management at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is known for his work in workforce analytics, statistical modeling and psychological measurement. Nigel’s work has appeared in leading scientific journals including Industrial Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice and Frontiers in Quantitative Psychology & Measurement, as well as in the popular press. Nigel is also co-author of the book The Power of People: Learn How Successful Organizations Use Workforce Analytics To Improve Business Performance (Pearson, 2017).

Ian Knowlson

Futurist and social influencer Ian has over 25 years experience as a recruiter and HR consultant. He has worked with organisations of all shapes and sizes who want to ensure they get the best from their most valuable resource; their people.

Is the Future of Talent Recruitment about Leadership? – Video Interview

In my search across the globe for the leading views on the Future of Talent Recruitment I recently visited the EMEAR (Europe, Middle East, Africa & Russia) HQ of Cisco Systems at Bedfont Lakes, just outside London, where I interviewed Colin Seward their EMEAR CIO.

 

 

 

 

 

Is the Future of Talent Recruitment about Leadership?

In my search across the globe for the leading views on the Future of Talent Recruitment I recently visited the EMEAR (Europe, Middle East, Africa & Russia) HQ of Cisco Systems at Bedfont Lakes, just outside London, where I interviewed Colin Seward their EMEAR CIO.

Click here to view the video

Colin is a highly respected thought leader in the technology world whose recent talk at the Gartner Symposium 2018 was widely acclaimed and generated much discussion and debate amongst the audience of CIOs present. So, I was keen to ask him how he saw the Future of Work and the Future of Talent and Talent Recruitment developing within Cisco IT but also generally across the technology sector and was fascinated by his answers.

Future of Work and Talent Recruitment

When I asked Colin for his opinion on the Future of Work and Talent, I was delighted to hear how positive he is about the future. He talked about recent research that Cisco has undertaken in the US around the creation and displacement of workers. The research indicated that it would not lead to a reduction in employment but a significant shift in the work people undertake and the skills they will need to possess.

As an example, Colin proudly outlined how his team are applying Artificial Intelligence within Cisco IT to increase the productivity of engineers by removing repetitive and boring work, especially in system admin tasks where there are huge time pressures, thus enabling them to move on to more interesting and challenging tasks. While in network security Colin explained how AI and automation are being used extensively to enable Cisco’s Cyber Security team to respond rapidly to the 1.2 trillion security events the global Cisco network receives daily.

It is clear from talking to Colin that he is passionate about how AI and machine learning can both improve the speed and quality of the service his team deliver internally whilst at the same time enriching the job content and challenges his engineers face. This is the type progressive thinking and application of technology which we believe marks Colin as a leader in his field.

Bridging the Technology Skills-Gaps

Colin sees no immediate solution to the hard- and soft-skills gaps that are a feature of technology talent recruitment and retention today. “Soft skills like creative thinking and problem solving are crucial skills that will always be relevant in the future” whereas, Colin believes “technical skills will come and go and need refreshing as new technologies emerge – however the professional skills such as ‘understanding software lifecycle or data visualization will continue to underpin these”.

Only recently a LinkedIn survey indicated that soft-skills matter as much or more than hard skills. What sets Colin out as a leader is he has accepted the argument that the combination of soft skills with technical skills are needed and moved beyond the debate into understanding and planning for the consequences of operating in a world where soft-skills matter.

Continuous Learning

For Colin part of the solution to this problem for his team is continuous learning.

“The challenge with this is that when you are in a project it is all too easy to de-prioritise learning” was Colin’s thinking. He went on to explain:

“if you continue to deprioritise learning there will eventually come a time when your teams’ overall skills-set are behind and once you are behind it becomes a problem which may force your team members ultimately to take six months away from business critical projects to upskill and retrain”.

Colin highlighted how the Cisco IT Workforce Strategy, which exists on three levels — individual, team and organisation — has been established to facilitate continuous learning.

At the individual level the team members are empowered through the “Three-Es” framework: education, exposure and experience. Within Cisco IT individuals own their personal development by initially establishing their existing skill-sets and then plotting how they can then leverage the “Three-Es” to develop their skills and continually improve themselves, thus enabling greater job mobility into their future chosen career.

Within each IT team, managers identify their teams’ collective skills, strengths, areas for development and how the managers create the environment of continuous personal development and learning that supports the team’s internal mobility.

Finally, the workforce strategy planning takes place at the organisation level where the IT senior leadership team (SLT) review skills for the whole of IT. The SLT look at the trends for the future and start the planning of how the IT team will develop those skills. They also consider which parts of the IT organisation will need to start investing in developing those future skills now. Within the workforce planning they look at the demand for skills, trends in the marketplace, what they have inside Cisco IT and how do they start to close some of those skills gaps.

They ask some fundamental resource planning questions: do they need to recruit new people and if so what sort of people? For example, university graduates, or people that are “silver bullets” that close a particular subject matter expertise gap. They also consider retraining people within the team or using contractors or vendor companies who have a particular niche skill.

For me this once again sets Colin out as a progressive and proactive thinker. He has “future-paced” himself and his team into the new world of work and is initiating solutions that will ensure their continued success.

Buddy-System

Colin shared with me a specific tactic they use to bridge internal skills gaps called the “buddy-system”. This is where new graduate entrants to Cisco, with for example programming skills, “buddy-up” with experienced engineers whose key skills relate to managing networks. This Cisco “buddy-system” facilitates cross-learning and shared experiences which not only increases the IT function’s collective skill-sets, it facilitates a whole host of other benefits like team working, shared values and a collection of informal collaborative networks all of which high performing businesses possess in abundance.

Application of the SFIA Framework

A common challenge across different geo-political regions is how multi-nationals harmonise the different IT functions, job roles and skill-sets to create a common internal framework, especially when technology is automating elements of the roles differently within the varied parts of the regions.

Colin shared with me how Cisco IT is starting to use the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) Framework to overcome this challenge. He talked enthusiastically about how they have rebuilt all the job profiles within Cisco IT using the Burning Glass Tool to suck the job postings for different job roles across the Internet before then breaking out the skills for the job roles within Cisco IT.
They then use another tool, Lexonis, which allows them to send the various job roles out to the managers within Cisco IT to ensure the skill-sets for the new job roles were a match.

The SFIA framework supports this by facilitating a shared vocabulary and framework across the IT organisation to enable consistency across all of IT and to future proof it. Whilst they are still testing out the framework, if successful the whole solution will enable engineers and IT professionals within Cisco IT to be highly mobile across the whole business, which creates greater career opportunities and challenges for his team.

Conclusion

These are all proactive strategies that will enable Cisco IT to attract, recruit, retain and retrain the best professionals in the industry. I find it refreshing to see a leader being so passionate and progressive in his team’s resource planning and career development. So often in recruitment we see “reactive” businesses and managers that take a knee-jerk reaction to talent attraction and retention.

What is clear is that Colin and his SLT have set out to first acquire and retain the best talent; and having done so have fully grasped that the Future of Work and Future of Talent Recruitment is not one where reactive strategies will enable them to thrive.

In the future, more than ever, the only thing that will set a business like Cisco above its competition is ultimately its people. Investing in and further developing people is going to be a key differentiator in the War for Talent.

When so many business are plotting a course using AI and Machine Learning that sees a reduction in employee numbers and a supposed increase in productivity and profitability it is refreshing to see that through Colin’s leadership, Cisco’s IT organisation is charting a course that will see them extend their leadership in the world of Technology and business through a strategy that attracts, recruits, retains and retrains the best professionals in the industry.

 

Top 5 Recruitment Sectors for growth in 2019

We are now into our sixth year of this blog series since first writing our amazingly popular blog post Top 5 Recruitment Sectors to be in for the next 5-10 years. With over 25,000 views this remains our most popular blog post ever.

 

Our annual blog has become almost as popular and with huge uncertainty in the UK, Europe and Globally we expect this year to be no different

In 2012/3 when we made our prediction for Top 5 Recruitment Sectors to be in for the next 5-10 years the top five were:

  1. Information Technology
  2. Engineering
  3. Energy, Oil and Gas
  4. Healthcare
  5. Emerging Technology application

We think it is safe to say that anyone who went into these sectors in 2013 would be very happy with their decision. Only Oil and Gas in the energy sector has seen any major issues with “renewables” now becoming the major area for growth in this sector.

 

UK and Global Economic Dynamics

As with previous years it’s important for us to outline the economic climate we are basing our predictions on. With the UK less than thirteen weeks away from leaving the EU and with no certainty of the agreed route of exit, or even if Brexit will actually happen, the future is very uncertain.

Remarkably the UK economy is proving highly resilient and GDP growth this year is still projected to be 1.2%. We believe that once the Brexit future becomes clearer we will see growth return to 1.6-1.9% later this year, as We see companies currently holding off investment until the medium term future become clearer.

In the EU growth in Q3 of 2018 in Germany and France surprisingly started to falter though still above the UK.

In the US and the rest of the world uncertainty remains over trade with China which has seen some economic slowdown in both Asia and America. We believe that despite Trump’s confrontational style of negotiating a deal will be done and we will see growth in these regions return. The IMF currently predict the US GDP will grow 2.6% and China’s GDP 6.2% in 2019.

For more details check this article from the Guardian Newspaper UK economic growth tipped to be slowest in Europe next year

Global Recruitment Thought Leaders

This year we have launched Global Recruitment Thought Leaders (GRTL) which is an original initiative that investigates the future of work and the future of talent recruitment.

The GRTL project is pioneered by myself, a global influencer, business expert, employment futurist and owner of growth consultancy Selling Success; and San Sunner, the founder of REC- Social, a social media management company that focuses exclusively on the talent recruitment sector.

The world of work as we know it is being transformed by the exponential growth of revolutionary technology and considerable shifts in workforce demographics. In order to remain competitive in this modern era businesses need to remodel their company culture and approaches to leadership, implement contemporary tools, and foster environments that keep up with the times and create value. As a result, business leaders and their recruitment partners face considerable challenges adjusting to this future reality.

GRTL sets out to explore the new paradigm and dissect its impact on the future talent landscape through in-depth discussions with industry leaders across a variety of sectors. The purpose is constructive debates, informative interviews and knowledge sharing with global thought leaders will provide an innovative hub for business owners to assimilate fresh ideas in preparation for the future.

As a Top 10 Global Influencer our MD, Ian Knowlson is very optimistic about what the future holds explaining that “technological advancements possess the potential to help us solve many of the major issues facing mankind in the twenty-first century such as cheap sustainable energy, global skill shortages, an aging population, food and water security, inequality, lack of economic and employment opportunity and climate change.”

With speculation about automation and artificial intelligence rendering people as inadequate for work in the future, business leaders need to take ownership of the narrative and be clearer in terms of their communication about prospective plans and objectives.

The introduction of the GRTL video series delivers a knowledge base that helps all business stakeholders to understand and adapt to the changing landscape, while firmly positioning themselves for long term success!

To find out more information about Global Recruitment Thought Leaders and journey into the future world of work and talent recruitment visit www.globalrecruitmentthoughtleaders.com

Top five sectors for high growth in 2019

 

No5 Construction

For 2019 we have placed the construction sector below the level we would typically rank it due to Brexit uncertainty, but it is still in a healthy state and represents a great sector for recruiters.

There remains a huge shortage of skilled trades people such as bricklayers, electricians and scaffolders to name but three; and in the professional/technical niches quantity surveyors remains one of the hardest skills to source in the UK across all recruitment sectors.

These skill shortages are expected to continue well into the next decade so the medium to long-term outlook for the sector is healthy. In 2018 the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB)

reported that the industry will need to find 157,000 new recruits by 2021 in order to keep up with demand. A forecast also in 2018 from the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) revealed that over 150,000 construction jobs are set to be created over the next five years, with 15,350 carpenters and 9,350 labourers needed. There will also be a significant growth in a range of professional and managerial roles.

The recent IHS Markit/CIPS UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index published in January 2019 indicated “An expected boost from transport and energy projects underpinned a rise in business optimism to an eight-month high in December. Construction sector confidence was also helped by softer input cost inflation and signs of a turnaround in supply chain difficulties from the low point seen last August.”

Tim Moore, economics associate director at IHS Markit, is on record as saying, “levels of optimism remained subdued in relation to those recorded by the survey over much of the past six years, largely reflecting concerns that Brexit uncertainty will continue to encourage delays with decision-making, especially on commercial projects.”

It’s fair to say that but for Brexit we would have ranked this as third in out of the top five sectors for growth this year and it still may end up there if the Brexit issues resolve themselves quickly.

 

No4 Healthcare

With an ageing population across most of the industrialised world healthcare recruitment is tipped to be one of the top five recruitment sectors for the next decade or so.

The announcement this year of the UK government’s 10-year investment plan of an extra £20b a year by 2023 for the NHS will not immediately flow through to staffing. It is impossible to see, however, that we will not see an increase in demand for both permanent and temporary staffing requirements. What these will be, in terms of the types of staff and the impact of new procedures, technology and processes are also unclear.

What is clear is that all the dials point to with increases in populations, there will be increases in demands for services across virtually every sector with maternity care, mental health, elderly support and earlier detection and prevention of diseases ear-marked for extra investment.

Unless productivity is massively increased by the application of new working practices or technology, the numbers entering employment through huge increased training investment, or massive inward migration into the UK, the skill shortages which currently pervade the NHS are not going away in either the short or medium term.

This means the opportunities for existing suppliers or new entrants remains good. The opportunities for technology providers to support the NHS where new skills such as AI, Automation, Machine Learning and Big Data which are not normally recruited is huge. The challenge here will be to meet the demand in the NHS within their rigid pay bands when the private sector are already paying huge skill premiums themselves.

There is clearly a massive gap and demand opportunity here. Perhaps a creative collaborative solution can be found between the university/training sector, NHS Trusts and the agency providers, which helps to bridge this demand.

We would be hugely interested in meeting and interviewing anyone as part of our new Global Recruitment Thought Leaders video series who has ideas around this.

 

No3 Engineering

The top three positions are very close with us ranking Engineering in third place purely due to the delay that has occurred with some capital projects due to Brexit uncertainty.

Nevertheless the overall demand is still very high.

In the UK the engineering sector employees 5.6m people — a rise of 5.1% in the past five years. Engineering generates 23% of GDP and has an accelerator effect on the UK economy, as every time a new job is created in engineering 1.7 jobs are created elsewhere in the economy. (Source The state of engineering Key facts 2018) Over 27% of enterprises are in engineering so the sector represents a significant part of the UK economy.

Engineering UK estimate that the economy requires 124,000 skilled engineers to meet existing demand and a further 79,000 engineers to meet demand from new industries and technologies making a demand for 203,000 engineers per year.

Unfortunately we have an annual shortfall of 59,000 engineers so there is not surprise that 46% of employers report recruitment difficulties.

In essence we need more engineers as a nation and with Brexit looming this is becoming a crucial skills gap that we need to address.

It goes without saying that this sector is set for a sustained growth for the next 3-5 years.

The recent KPMG/REC Jobs report indicated that Permanent Engineering demand was the highest alongside Accounting and Finance jobs, which we ranked at No 6, just outside our Top five due to Brexit uncertainty.

Temp/Contract demand was high as employers sought to fill their resource gaps with temporary labour.

 

No2 Energy, Oil and Gas

This is the first time this sector has made our top three for over eight years due to the oil price which has been so volatile; but the stabilisation of the oil price above the magic $50 a barrel now for over 12 months is seeing a healthy level of investment in the sector, if not in the UK.

Whilst this is not fuelling a jobs boom a dramatic rise in demand for renewables and nuclear in China, the UK and Europe has seen a tremendous demand for skills across this sector.

Renewable energy capacity in the UK has more than tripled in the past five years and in 2018 overtook fossil fuels for the first time ever.

Between July and September 2018, the capacity of wind, solar, biomass and hydropower reached 41.9 gigawatts, exceeding the 41.2GW capacity of coal, gas and oil-fired power plants. This would have been unthinkable a decade ago and the rate of growth of renewables means this is expected to continue.

Imperial College London, which compiled the figures, stated the rate at which renewables had been built in the past few years was greater than the “dash for gas” in the 1990s. Dr Iain Staffell, who undertook the research, said: “Britain’s power system is slowly but surely walking away from fossil fuels, and this quarter saw a major milestone on the journey.” The Guardian carried the story and further data is available in their article published in November 2018.

Renewables therefore now produce more than 20% of the UK’s electricity, and EU targets means that this is likely to increase to 30% by 2020.

According to Deloitte “a record 4.9 GW of offshore wind came on line in 2017 across 15 countries, bringing the total capacity to 19.3 GW, mostly located in the UK, Germany, China and Denmark. Offshore energy has reached parity in Germany and Denmark and is projected to do the same in the UK between 2025 and 2030.”

So you will not be surprised to hear that there are huge skills gaps emerging across the sector with over 80% of hiring managers reporting skill shortages as being their number one obstacle to continued business growth in 2018/19.

The Energy & Utilities Skills Partnership, a body made up of 29 leading organisations in the sector, has noted that an estimated 221,000 vacancies will need to be filled in the next decade, brought about through the retirement of 100,000 employees and 90,000 workers leaving to find new roles.

Interestingly enough, according to Taylor Hopkinson Skills Shortage Report the top three countries globally for vacancies in the sector are the UK, China and the Netherlands.

We may not be conventional in our thinking but we believe that in 2019 recruitment agencies operating in this sector will be amongst the fastest growing in terms of revenues, margins and profits; and given that the UK is probably amongst the richest nations in the world for offshore energy opportunities we see the medium term future for this sector as very positive.

 

No1 Information Technology

 

When we started writing these blog posts six years ago the term Information Technology and the sector were quite distinct and discreet but today technology pervades all our lives, environments both work and domestic and every profession and walk of life.

This sector is and will continue to be for the next two to three decades the one which will see the greatest skills gaps and the largest opportunities for recruitment agencies to grow in.

There are estimated to be in excess of 600,000 unfilled technology sector jobs in the UK according to the Edge Foundation and this is expected to continue growing at 12% p.a. up until 2024.

A recent study by Spiceworks State of IT where they surveyed 1,000 tech professionals across North America and Europe indicates that the two main drivers are Cyber Security and Artificial Intelligence. This is a great report and well worth a read.

With this in mind we believe the most acute skills shortages in 2019 are likely to be in the following areas:

Cyber security

Cyber security is now in such high demand that experts predict that the global market will be worth $165.2bn by 2023. New research by (ISC)2  puts the global workforce skills gap at 2.93 million with roughly 142,000 in Europe and 500,000 of those positions located in North America.

In the UK Cyber security talent requirements have soared as a result of several high-profile hacks, as organisations demand long-term defence against cybercrime and the annual requirement for permanent and contract IT security professionals has increased by 46%, according to the latest Tech Cities Job Watch report from Experis, the global leader in professional IT resourcing.

Data Scientists

For the past three years Data Scientist jobs have been named by Glassdoor as the No1 sought after skill in the US. In Europe it is estimated that the skills gap is 346,000 jobs with the European Commission estimating that a further 100,000 new jobs will be created by 2020. In addition IBM estimate that data scientists will account for 28% of all digital jobs by 2020.

Essentially there is clearly a huge growth opportunity for recruitment agencies to support this sector over the next few years.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning

Gartner is predicting that by the end of 2019 AI will be creating more jobs than it is taking. They indicate that whilst 1.8m jobs will be lost with manufacturing taking the biggest hit, 2.3m jobs will be created through automation in education, healthcare and the public sector.

Full Stack Developers

According to Indeed Full stack developers are among the most in-demand by employers right now in terms of open job postings. Demand is up 600+% over the past three years..

DevOps Engineers

These are rapidly becoming one of the top skills globally with Glassdoor naming them as No2 job in 2018 in the US and with everything moving towards the cloud there seems no let up in demand for these skills.

Python Developers

It’s hardly surprising with the explosion in demand for AI that demand for Python Developer skills going through the roof. Python is now the fastest growing programming language and we see in 2019 an acceleration in demand for Python.

Java/JavaScript Developers

Growth of Cloud technology and solutions mean that demand for Java and JavaScript will continue to grow in 2019. Data from Glassdoor, Indeed and CWJobs all point to this being another growth skill area in 2019. The JavaScript demand is being fuelled by corporate enterprise environments that have a demand for the delivery of compelling interfaces.

 

 

2019 Overall Outlook

The outlook for the recruitment sector overall is positive despite the trials and tribulations in the UK caused by Brexit.

In December 2018 the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) annual report indicated that the UK sector is worth nearly £36 billion and is projected to grow in 2019 by a further 4% and 5% 2019/20.

“The number of businesses operating in the UK recruitment industry grew by almost 10 per cent in the year to March 2018, totalling 30,430, and the industry employed approximately 115,000 people”

Other figures from the 2017/18 report include:

  • Almost two thirds (64 per cent) of temporary assignments were for 12+ weeks, while one in five (20 per cent) were for 6+ months (compared to 61 per cent and 20 per cent respectively in 2016/17)
  • 85 per cent of contract placements were for 12+ weeks, and 45 per cent of contract workers were on assignment for 6+ months (compared to 80 per cent and 44 per cent respectively in 2016/17)
  • The average value of permanent placements from the wider recruitment industry was £4,238 (up by 6.4 per cent on the average in 2016/17)
  • The average annualised turnover of each temporary/contract worker on assignment was £34,976 (up 20 per cent on the average in 2016/17)

We also see positive signs from the 20-30 clients we work with that the recruitment sector overall is positive and provides a significant contribution to the record employment levels that exist in the UK today.

It may be controversial but we have almost full employment in the UK with record skills gaps in virtually all professional and skilled sectors of the economy.

We appreciate that the large numbers of unskilled people in the UK needs addressing, but compared to the economic challenges that many of us faced during the recessions of the 1980s, 90s and 00s, the outlook is extremely positive.

Why Have We Created The Video Series?

The world of work and the future of talent recruitment are changing.

Whilst I am very positive about the future of work and the future of talent recruitment the rate of change is accelerating leaving many employees concerned, confused and fearful about what the future holds for them their jobs, their security and the society in which we live.

I am optimistic about the future because the technological advancements being featured also possess the potential to help us solve many of the major issues facing mankind in the twenty-first century such as cheap sustainable energy, global skill shortages, an aging population, food and water security, inequality, lack of economic and employment opportunity and climate change.

It is my opinions that we must address these fears and make sure we harness these advancements to ensure that the whole of society globally benefits.

With this in mind we are reaching out to Global Thought Leaders to engage them in a discussion about the future of work and the future of talent recruitment. We’d like to know how they see it in their part of the industry and globe. We wish to understand how they see technology impacting and growing. As the world of work is transformed both in terms of technology and leadership styles we are interested in their views on how you engage work forces to work for you, plus how you motivate and retain talent.

At Global Recruitment Thought Leaders we believe discussion and debate is healthy so please join in our conversation about the most appropriate way forward.

Ian Knowlson
Global Influencer
Future of Work and the Future of Talent Recruitment

Why Have We Created The Video Series?

The world of work and the future of talent recruitment are changing.

Whilst I am very positive about the future of work and the future of talent recruitment the rate of change is accelerating leaving many employees concerned, confused and fearful about what the future holds for them their jobs, their security and the society in which we live.

I am optimistic about the future because the technological advancements being featured also possess the potential to help us solve many of the major issues facing mankind in the twenty-first century such as cheap sustainable energy, global skill shortages, an aging population, food and water security, inequality, lack of economic and employment opportunity and climate change.

It is my opinions that we must address these fears and make sure we harness these advancements to ensure that the whole of society globally benefits.

With this in mind we are reaching out to Global Thought Leaders to engage them in a discussion about the future of work and the future of talent recruitment. We’d like to know how they see it in their part of the industry and globe. We wish to understand how they see technology impacting and growing. As the world of work is transformed both in terms of technology and leadership styles we are interested in their views on how you engage work forces to work for you, plus how you motivate and retain talent.

At Global Recruitment Thought Leaders we believe discussion and debate is healthy so please join in our conversation about the most appropriate way forward.

Ian Knowlson
Global Influencer
Future of Work and the Future of Talent Recruitment

Upcoming Interviews

Colin Seward
EMEAR CIO
CISCO

Ian Knowlson – Speaks at Cisco Live

 

We are delighted to confirm that Global Influencer, Ian Knowlson, has accepted an invitation to attend Cisco Live 2019 in Barcelona. Ian has agreed to take part in the Service Providers CIO Track on 28th and 29th January 2019 alongside:

Moderator: Guillermo Diaz Jr, Global CIO, Cisco.

Panellists:

  • Ian Knowlson, expert on the Future of Work, Selling Success
  • Jonathan Davidson, SVP/GM Service Provider Business, Cisco
  • Michelle Dennedy, VP and Chief Privacy Officer, Cisco
  • Phil Wolfenden, VP CX Centres EMEAR, Cisco
  • Sri Srinivasan, SVP/GM Team Collaboration Group, Cisco

 

Ian will be answering questions from the audience on the Future of Work and bridging the talent gap as well as the future of talent recruitment.

The future of Recruitment

The future of
Recruitment

TOP 100
INFLUENCERS

inside


Methodology


Network Map


Top 100 List

methodology

The PageRank based methodology we use to extract influencers on a particular topic takes into account the number and quality of contextual references that a user receives. These calculations take into account a user’s resonance (engagement) relevance (number of tweets on topic) and reach (number of followers).

If you want to learn more, please read our article that outlines influencer identification.

Interactions between the top
Future of Recruitment Influencers

This map was created using our Influencer Relationship Management software.

Future of Recruitment
Top 100

Rank Name Twitter Handle Influencer Score
1 Meghan M. Biro MeghanMBiro 100.00
2 Tamara McCleary TamaraMcCleary 99.82
3 Harold Sinnott HaroldSinnott 87.10
4 Danielle Guzman guzmand 86.73
5 Theodora Lau psb_dc 84.53
6 Antonio Vieira Santos akwyz 80.82
7 Alvin Foo alvinfoo 65.69
8 Tim Sackett TimSackett 62.22
9 Josh Bersin Josh_Bersin 58.90
10 Ian Knowlson IanKnowlson 55.91
11 David Green david_green_uk 50.62
12 Sven Semet SvenSemet 47.76
13 Roger Haenggi rohae 46.35
14 Jeanniey Mullen jeannieymullen 39.58
15 Kevin Green kevingreenwnc 37.42
16 Christina Dove ChristinaDove7 35.99
17 Kathleen Kruse kkruse 35.55
18 Paul Daugherty pauldaugh 34.93
19 Kevin W. Grossman KevinWGrossman 33.87
20 Maren Hogan marenhogan 30.38
21 Steve Boese SteveBoese 30.13
22 Anna Naveed annanaveed 29.27
23 Dave Millner HRCurator 29.22
24 Tony Restell tonyrestell 28.39
25 Jeanne Meister jcmeister 27.93
26 Matt Alder mattalder 27.16
27 Ruchi Bhatia rucsb 25.28
28 Andrew Spence AndySpence 24.80
29 Shelly Kramer ShellyKramer 23.55
30 Jacob Morgan jacobm 23.53
31 Lilian Mahoukou LilianMahoukou 22.80
32 Wilko S. Wolters WSWMUC 22.58
33 Jennifer Cordeiro jenn_cordeiro 22.10
34 Larry Boyer LarryBoyer 21.24
35 Jennifer McClure JenniferMcClure 20.98
36 Greg Savage greg_savage 20.47
37 Roshaunda Green RoshaundaDGreen 20.45
38 Jackye Clayton jackyeclayton 18.80
39 Hope Frank HopeFrank 18.38
40 Mervyn Dinnen MervynDinnen 18.31
41 Lars Schmidt Lars 18.05
42 Gloria Lombardi LOMBARDI_GLORIA 17.15
43 Trish McFarlane TrishMcFarlane 16.47
44 Rachel Miller rachelloumiller 15.94
45 Sharon O'Dea sharonodea 15.15
46 Ann Swain AnnAPSCo 15.11
47 Peter Linas PeterLinas 14.98
48 Erin Winick erinwinick 14.49
49 Gautam Ghosh GautamGhosh 14.39
50 Christopher J. Dwyer CJD_Ardent 14.29
51 Steven John SJTechGuy 13.50
52 Jay Kuhns jrkuhns 13.44
53 Sun Bisht sonalbisht 13.04
54 Warren Young DJWarrenYoung 13.04
55 David D'Souza dds180 13.00
56 Dorothy Dalton DorothyDalton 12.42
57 Rémy Baranger RBaranger 12.23
58 Mark Minevich MMinevich 11.81
59 Rafaela Rafailova R_RafailovaMCMI 11.76
60 Linda Aldred linda_aldred 11.62
61 Wolfgang Brickwedde I4CR 11.16
62 Steve Ardire sardire 10.42
63 Jobhop jobhopjulie 10.07
64 Susi M Darwin SusiDarwin 9.60
65 Jose Watson Josewats 9.31
66 Davethewave Davethewave 9.30
67 Denis Pennel PennelDenis 9.06
68 Robin Erickson, PhD RAEricksonPhD 9.03
69 Wolfgang Kerner WKerner 8.89
70 Rifat Sheikh rifat_sheikh 8.59
71 Dyan Finkhousen DyanFinkhousen 8.40
72 Craig Fisher Fishdogs 8.21
73 Stacy Donovan Zapar StacyZapar 6.94
74 Jim Stroud jimstroud 6.47
75 Bill Boorman BillBoorman 5.67
76 Matt Charney mattcharney 5.59
77 Andy Headworth andyheadworth 5.40
78 Dave Hazlehurst googledave 5.17
79 Matthew Liptak mattliptak 5.00
80 Sarah Brennan ImSoSarah 5.00
81 Juan Carlos Cubeiro juancarcubeiro 4.35
82 Barry Deutsch Barry_at_IMPACT 4.19
83 Cheryl Cran cherylcran 4.05
84 Stefan Ries StefanRies66 3.93
85 Ted Bauer tedbauer2003 3.75
86 louisetriance louisetriance 3.62
87 Kat Mandelstein katmandelstein 3.23
88 Codi Shewan codishewan 3.17
89 Michelle McIntyre FromMichelle 2.97
90 Lisa Scales LisaScales 2.62
91 Adriano Corso AdriaCorso 2.47
92 Manish Bahl mbahl 2.39
93 Ira S Wolfe HireAuthority 2.34
94 Vito Carrozzo VitoCarrozzo 2.31
95 Dennis Patel ITMob 2.27
96 Billy McDiarmid BillyMcDiarmid 2.23
97 Mara Swan MaraSwan 2.09
98 Ãine Hall HawkSearch 2.07
99 Adam Rabinovitch adam_rab 1.96
100 David A Smith DavidSmithGFF 1.90

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Top Recruitment Sectors for growth in 2018

It is five years since I wrote my amazingly popular blog Top 5 Recruitment Sectors to be in for the next 5-10 years. At the time unemployment was still rising across most of Europe and the UK economy flat-lining.

25,000 views later things have transformed somewhat and we have seen some dramatic changes in the World.

Economic positive growth has returned to much of the world economy and the OECD outlook for 2018 is very positive. The UK voting for Brexit and the US voting for Donald Trump have seen a huge shift towards populist voting and a rejection of the establishment and globalisation and sadly the growth of extremist terrorism.
Overall however I believe our predictions have been pretty accurate.

At the time our predictions were:

  • Information Technology
  • Engineering
  • Energy, Oil and Gas
  • Healthcare
  • Emerging Technology application

Anyone who moved into these sectors in 2013 would have seen a pretty successful period of opportunity and growth perhaps only energy, oil and gas sector agencies may have been disappointed.

This year I have accepted a few speaking engagements at conferences, the first of which is Recruitment Expo 2018 in London at the end of January.

There I will be talking about the Future of Recruitment 2020-2030 and will be sharing my views on what the world of employment and recruitment will look like in 2020-2030? What changes are likely and unlikely? Will Artificial Intelligence and Bots replace everyone and everything? Will recruiters still have a job and if so what will that job look like?

UK and Global Economic Dynamics

As always it is important to state the economic forecasts on which we are basing our predictions.

2017 has seen UK economic growth come in at around 1.5% pretty much in line with what we predicted last year in our blog Top Recruitment Sectors for growth in 2017

and above the 1% some people feared. In fact JP Morgan estimate it will end up at 2%.

For 2018 most commentators are making forecasts between 1.4% (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and 2.2% (Capital Economics Consultancy). We have chosen to base our forecast on a UK GDP Growth rate of 1.8%, which is the median. We believe the biggest impact on the recruitment sector will be the pervasive skill shortages across the UK that will see salaries and freelance/temp rates rise strongly in 2018.

Globally the picture is positive which has seen strong growth in the world’s stock markets. The BBCs Economic Editor Kamal Ahmed characterises it as …

“the gentle recovery in economic growth and increasing demand for companies products across the major drivers of the world economy – Japan and the Asian emerging markets; the Eurozone and, most importantly, America.

Secondly, there is the continuing stable expansion of that other engine of the world economy – China.

It is the first time since the financial crisis that such a growth “synchronisation” has happened.

Thirdly, there is little evidence of increasing inflationary pressures, meaning interest rates are likely to remain at close to historically low levels.”

Taken from BBC Website

All in all we believe the economic outlook for recruiters will be favourable with one or two challenges caused by the roller-coaster headlines associated Brexit negotiations.

On this our advice is simple to our readers and clients.

Stay focused on your locus of control and do not become distracted by things like Brexit over, which you and your teams have no influence and no control.

Top five Sectors for high growth in 2018

No 5. Construction

With several of our clients operating very successfully in this sector we’d love to be more positive as we do see a huge skills shortage in construction and therefore the opportunity for strong agency growth is very high.

There is however a large amount of uncertainty caused by Brexit over new

infrastructure and commercial projects.

The recent figures in December (published in January) from IHS Markit on the Purchasing Managers index pointed to a mixed picture with Commercial projects index contracting, the infrastructure projects index stable but house building index riding high. Overall the picture was positive with a growth figure of 52.2 (any figure over 50% is positive growth). This was the third month in a row and:

There were positive signals for the near-term business outlook, with new order growth reaching a seven-month high and job creation the strongest since June

The sectors employment index was also positive so overall we see the future demand for staff from projects will remain healthy. What makes us even more positive is the migration figures which show that many of the Eastern European workers from Poland, for example, have returned and reduced the available talent pool.

With the overall demand from UK Construction healthy for next six months and availability of skills weak we see this as positive for those recruitment agencies in this sector though given the uncertainty we would not be encouraging too many businesses to risk new entry into the market currently.

There are many new infrastructure projects planned in 2018-19 and as we move towards getting clarity on the post-Brexit world we believe investment will return to the sector.

Overall this is our reason placing Construction at No. 5 this year.

No. 4 Healthcare

This is predominantly in the area of temporary nursing and medical staff, which according to Kevin Green REC is a result of the strain on NHS Trusts.

We have include Healthcare for the first time in a couple of years as the sector appears to have shrugged off the challenges and uncertainty surrounding IR35 and the demand for health professionals seems once again to be growing rapidly and at a steady pace.

“Nursing and medical staff remain the most in demand for temporary roles – further evidence of the strain the NHS is feeling on filling vacancies.

Whilst the above quote relates to his comments in the December 2017 IHS Markit/REC Report on Jobs what is clear is that this is a trend that is unlikely to subside in 2018 and if anything likely to accelerate as the demand for healthcare services shows no sign of abating.

As can been seen there are clearly huge supply issues as stated recently in the Guardian 13th December 2017

While the NHS in England has 40,000 more clinical staff than in 2012, it is short of 42,000 nurses, midwives and therapists, according to Health Education England, which has drafted the NHS’s first strategy in 25 years to tackle chronic understaffing.

HEE, the NHS’s staffing agency, also warns that the health service workforce, which already stands at 1.4 million, will need to increase by 190,000 by 2027 unless the rise in illness recedes.

Bank and agency personnel cover most of the vacant shifts. But HEE warns that patients could receive poorer care because unavailability of staff is so common that 8% of vacant shifts go unfilled, thus “increasing pressure on existing staff and potentially impacting on quality”.

The HEE Report also highlighted:

Shortages are now so acute that:

  • The NHS is short of 42,000 nurses, midwives, physiotherapists and occupational therapists.
  • A widespread lack of nurses is most severe in London, where 15% of posts are vacant, and lowest at 8% in the north-east.
  • There are 1,674 (26%) fewer district nurses and 842 fewer learning disability nurses than in 2012.
  • GP numbers have fallen by 1% over the last five years despite a key government pledge to increase the total by 5,000 between 2015 and 2020.
  • Almost one in three paramedic jobs are vacant across England.
  • The number of nurses leaving the profession rose from 7.1% in 2011-12 to 8.7% last year.

The NHS has become much better at controlling off framework spend and so the barriers of entry for non-framework providers are high and we see them remaining so if not increasing in the future. This sector therefore has good growth opportunity for framework providers.

No. 3 Manufacturing

In the final quarter of 2017 manufacturing enjoyed its best quarter for three and a half years and the outlook given the reduction in the pound is for this to continue for the next 2-3 years.

Manufacturing has certainly been a major winner of Brexit and exporters particularly are seeing a renaissance in their fortunes, which bodes well for UK Plc. in the years to come.

This is a result of two big trends; a weaker sterling caused by Brexit, which is making exports cheaper and the expanding global economy particularly China, Europe and the USA.

Against this back drop we must take note of the supply of workers in the sector which according to surveys in 2017 is reaching critical point with 67% of manufacturers in the summer reporting concerns that skill shortages were affecting their ability to grow and met demands for new orders.

This reinforces Kevin Green’s comments that we will see significant increased pressure on salaries in 2018.

The supply pressures were reiterated by the CBI in October 2017 following a survey of 450 members stating:

The number of manufacturing firms citing a shortage of workers for limiting their investment plans is at its highest for four years, according to a survey by the CBI.

In another survey of 371 manufacturers, 28% said order books were above normal while 11% said they were below normal. The balance of + 17 points was the joint highest on record and well above the long-term

The CBI stated that order books were particularly buoyant for the motor vehicles and transport equipment, and mechanical engineering sectors.

Anna Leach, the CBI’s head of economic intelligence, said: “As we head towards the end of 2017, UK manufacturers’ total order books remain at a near-30-year high, with export order books remaining at their strongest since the mid-1990s.

Taking all this evidence into hand we are confident that 2018 will be a great year for recruitment agencies servicing the manufacturing sectors.

We have some concerns about the medium to long term as we believe this critical skill shortage will encourage organisations, with interest rates so low, to accelerate their automation plans introducing Bots, Augmentation, Drones, 3D Printing and AI to increase productivity within their manufacturing processes.

For this reason we would encourage recruitment agencies to seize this opportunity to move into these key niche sectors to future proof their business and take advantage of the premium fees that will be available.

No. 2 Engineering

As stated in previous years the top two sectors offer by far the greatest opportunity for growth than any others. This year however we do see manufacturing and healthcare starting to close the gap and for once it is possible that one of them could by the end of 2018 break into the top two.

We have stated this before but the scale of the problem is estimated to be:

Research suggests that 182,000 additional workers are needed to plug engineering-focused graduate and apprentice positions every year until 2022, according to Engineering UK.

 That’s over 1m more engineers.

According to Engineering UK; Currently the UK produces only 46,000 engineering graduates each year. There will also be demand for around 69,000 people qualified at advanced apprenticeship or equivalent level each year. Yet only around 27,000 UK apprentices a year currently qualify at the appropriate level.

There is light at the end of the tunnel but it is many years off and that is the introduction of the apprenticeship levy is forcing employers to look at investing in training, The numbers of higher apprenticeship scheme (degree equivalent) and the number of students embarking on these is growing and will accelerate over the next 2-3 years.

Sadly for employers these apprentices are 5-8 years away from making a significant impact on the skill shortage but it’s a start.

As with manufacturing, we see automation, AI, augmentation and bots having an impact, which will also help the UK productivity figures that are woefully behind the rest of the G7 countries.

As stated in previous years the top two sectors offer by far the greatest opportunity for growth than any others. This year however we do see manufacturing and healthcare starting to close the gap and for once it is possible that one of them could by the end of 2018 break into the top two.

  • An ageing workforce of baby-boomers leaving between now and 2025.
  • The lack of STEM graduates over the past 10-15 years means the talent pool to replace them is woefully small and undersized
  • Brexit migration changes have seen the number of foreign nationals from EU countries returning to dampen the talent pool
  • The under investment in training over the past 10-15 years means the number entering the market to replace those exiting is totally insufficient.

No. 1  IT and Technology

Once again IT and Technology tops our top five list and we do not really see this changing before the end of the decade.

All our clients operating in these sectors have healthy grow figures, typically 30-100% year on year. Their placement fees and margins are 18-22%, and their average fee values approaching £8-10,000 per deal.

Candidate shortages pervade the sector and the list of critical skills that people cannot source grows monthly.

Our IT & Tech Niche Recruitment Agencies tell us that the following are the top ten they predict for 2018 in no particular order are:

  • AR Development skills
  • Data Scientists
  • Cyber Security Experts
  • Mobile App Developers
  • SaaS in the Cloud Professionals
  • Applied Machine Learning
  • Multi-faceted Programming languages (Python, JavaScript)
  • Data Analytics
  • Digital Transformation
  • AI Experts

The principal drivers in this sector that are causing the skills shortage are:

  • Historical shortages of IT professionals
  • Acceleration of development and adoption IT & Tech products by business
  • Push for commercial and competitive advantage
  • Push for the next disruptive business model
  • Lack of sector training
  • Baby Boomer Generations leaving the sector

These pressures are global not just UK. In fact it could be argued that the UK leads the world in many of these micro niche sectors such as Digital Transformation and Development, FinTech, AI, AR and Big Data.

For those businesses already in this sector we see 2018 being a healthy year for growth and margins.

Once again that’s our predictions for 2018.

These forecasts are based upon our hands on experience of working with 30-35 recruitment agencies across all sectors during the past 12 months. With all of them growing at annual rates of over 30%+ year-on-year and some 200-300%, we believe we are well placed to know the best sectors to work in.

As with 2017, despite Brexit we continue to see healthy times ahead for the UK Recruitment Market but as we move beyond 2020 with Brexit and the advance of technology the future remains less clear.

You may have a difference of opinion and have experiences, which are not so positive so please contact me, [email protected] and let us know or share your thoughts.

We’d love to hear them.

Once again IT and Technology tops our top five list and we do not really see this changing before the end of the decade.

All our clients operating in these sectors have healthy grow figures, typically 30-100% year on year. Their placement fees and margins are 18-22%, and their average fee values approaching £8-10,000 per deal.

Candidate shortages pervade the sector and the list of critical skills that people cannot source grows monthly.

Future of Recruitment 2020-2030 – Your Future Starts Today

Over the past six to seven years I have written many blogs, many of which have proved hugely popular like Top 5 Recruitment Sectors to be in for the next 5-10 years which has had over 30,000 readers and this years Top Recruitment Sectors for Growth in 2018 .
This blog however is probably my most important as for those of you working in the Recruitment Sector either acting as agencies, internal recruiters or HR professionals the next 15-20 year promise to be the most dynamic, volatile and revolutionary in the history of our sector.

The level of change that our industry and the “world of work” will go through is to some people incomprehensible.

As business growth coaches we are challenged when supporting our clients with their three to five year growth plans in having to predict the impact of many of these changes upon their market sectors a task we have been doing now for nearly 10 years.

If you are looking to develop your career in recruitment or sell your business in three to five years, what the world will look like and how resilient your market sector will be in five to ten years is a major consideration.

This question therefore is one we consider and reflect on weekly with our clients as more information and reports are circulated.

Our blog therefore represents our snapshot in time (Spring 2018) and could be different in six months time as revelations about the Future of the World of Work unfolds.

Recruitment Industry Agency Models

To us there are essentially three agency models, which can be blended or broken down and modified to reflect certain sectors.

  • Niche recruiters
  • Generalist Recruiters
  • Managed Services (MSP/RPO/NV/Mast Vend)

Increasingly the market is polarising around the Niche and Managed Service models with the generalists struggling to maintain margins, market differentiation and profitability.

Niche Recruiters

The Niche model, in its various guises, leverages the numerous skills-gaps that exist in the UK and Global economies and has two drivers,

  • Find the rare skilled candidates and gain a degree of exclusivity
  • Sell the rare skilled candidates to the highest bidder

Niche recruiters have been the success story of the past 15-20 years and are dominated by SMEs. They leverage their status as niche sector experts and master their ability to find and secure any skill in that sector. It is fair to say most of our high growth agencies are all niche agencies.

Increasingly these niches are becoming narrower and deeper. The expression “inch wide, mile deep” has been used many times to describe them.

These agencies have become very effective at maximising their fees and making healthy returns.

Managed Service Recruiters

These operate at the opposite end of the market and work on volume and at a lower transaction price. They industrialise process and are constantly seeking productivity gains to driver down delivery costs, as well as increase their quality service thus generating extra profit.

The cost of acquisition of staff for their clients is constantly failing as they invest greater and greater sums in automation. AI and chat-bots greatly excite this sector as it gives them even further opportunities to increase productivity gains. It also raises the bar for the smaller operators as entry to this market becomes more complex and costly. That said this too might shift with automation. We will have to see.

These suppliers have become very effective at exploiting their clients employer brands as they become very effective “one-stop-shops”.

At the same time the agencies in this sector are seeing their market under attack from Clients In-sourcing strategies where In-House Teams take these contracts back inside and TUPE over the operational staff that are delivering these solutions.

Generalist Recruiters

Increasingly the directors of these businesses are moving their companies more towards operating as a collection of niche businesses under one-roof as they see their margins squeezed by the ever-aggressive Managed Services Businesses and as they struggle to provide expertise that the niche agency suppliers bring to bear.

In certain localities across the UK we see a future for these generalists if they focus on getting close to the SME business sector in their locality but in most locations I think they will struggle unless they specialise and move towards the niche model.

Key Reports

This is a dynamic landscape with new reports out each week but the key reports we focused in this blog are:

Key Headlines

The world of work and the future of recruitment is going to be a highly dynamic market and there is no overwhelming consensus on the cumulative effects of change as to what the future will look like.

There is general agreement however on some elements like what are the major technological dynamics that will affect the market:

  • Automation
  • Augmentation
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Autonomous Vehicles
  • 3D Printing

It should also be noted that there are other effects, which also feed into this market dynamic and these are:

  • Longevity and ageing societies
  • Changing Nature of Work, flexible working, remote working
  • Climate change and natural resources
  • Geopolitical volatility
  • Consumer ethics and privacy issues

Automation
Automation affects employment in 2 ways:

            Displacement Effect

  • Negatively – by directly displacing workers from tasks they were previously performing.
  • Tend to be low skilled roles

           Productivity Effect

    • Positively – by increasing the demand for labour in other industries or jobs that arise due to automation
    • Tend to be high skilled roles

An analysis by Deloitte of ONS data suggests that the impact of automation is already being felt in sectors where a high proportion of jobs have a high chance of being automated. (Taken from REC – Future of Jobs).

In the UK most of the major jobs losses between 2001-15 have been in Manufacturing 720,000 with the largest number being created in Health and Social Care 1.1m.

Interestingly Professional, Scientific and Technical appeared in the top three for both jobs lost and created. Deloitte’s analysis concluded that all of those lost had a high chance of automation whilst of those created 88% had a low chance of automation.

Augmentation

This is where technology is not replacing workers but supporting or augmenting their skills and performance to improve their effectiveness and efficiency.

A good example of how automation is augmenting healthcare jobs can be seen from the work of Prof. Paul Leeson of Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital and his colleagues who have developed a system that they claim could save £1.1 billions of pounds by enabling the heart diseases to be picked up much earlier.

The technology will start to be available to NHS hospitals for free this summer and Prof Paul Leeson –”Data indicates that the system had greatly outperformed his fellow heart specialists.” Of 60,000 heart scans carried out each year, 12,000 are reportedly misdiagnosed at an estimated cost of £600million.

This story appeared in a Daily Telegraph article in 3rd Jan 2018.

Artificial Intelligence

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica :

Artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalise, or learn from past experience. 

This will remove a whole host of repetitive jobs across business and industry as can be seen later with the role of accountants and book keepers.

The World Economic Forum – Future of Jobs report, which looks at the 2015-2020 period and predicts which sectors are likely to see the most jobs losses.

Again this report like the Deloitte report lists Manufacturing and Production jobs high up behind Office and Administrative jobs. This time it lists Education and Training and Sales Related jobs as being the least in danger of automation. Once again Professional Business and Financial Operations jobs along with Management roles featured amongst the lowest at risk of automation.

Finally the work of Frey & Osborne from Oxford Martin University has been heavily quoted by many commentators and an interactive graphic produced by Bloomberg enables readers and recruiters to enter a job type and see the likely risk of automation to the role. We’d encourage you to review key jobs that you recruit for to see their likely risk of automation over the next few years.

Bloomberg quote Frey & Osborne:

Researchers at the University of Oxford, for example, estimate ” that nearly half of all U.S. jobs may be at risk in the coming decades, with lower-paid occupations among the most vulnerable.”

Their graphic for example shows that Accountants and Auditor though well educated and well paid were at a 94% risk of their jobs being automated.

Whilst this has been questioned by many you only have to look at the accounting tools now available from Xero or Sage to understand how through AI and machine learning this can easily happen.

As one of Sage’s Top 100 Global Business Influencers I contacted their product development people to see if they had any thing they could offer me to help explain this and I am delighted to say they shared with us details on their chatbot Pegg.

Pegg:

“..is your smart, admin assistant that lives in your mobile, so you can record your expenses anywhere, anytime, without hassle or entering paper receipts.”

“Because of clever integration, simply message Pegg with your expenses and it automatically accounts for it in Sage One.”

With bank feeds now entering all your credit card and bank account transactions directly into Sage One and with rules on how expenses from specific suppliers are handled, the whole process of book-keeping and receipting your transactions can be simplified and semi-automated. It becomes very easy to see how with further AI this whole accounting process could be fully automated in the next 5-10 years.

In the UK Carl Frey, co-director of the Oxford Martin programme on technology and employment at Oxford University, estimates that as many as 35 per cent of jobs in the UK are at risk of loss.

The top ten of jobs most at risk of computerisation feature

With the top ten jobs at least risk from computerisation being

Autonomous Vehicles

Much has been said and written about this subject in recent months.

Elon Musk the CEO of Tesla Inc.claims totally autonomous vehicles will be on the roads in 2019 and they will be 10x safer than human drivers.

In November 2017 the UK Government announced Driverless cars will be on Britain’s roads by 2021 as a result of sweeping regulatory reforms that will put the UK in the forefront of a post-Brexit technological revolution as reported by the Guardian

And in the same months Volvo signed an agreement with Uber to supply them with tens of thousands of autonomous driving compatible base vehicles between 2019 and 2021..

Then in December 2017 Tesla launched their new “Semi-Truck” whose power and torque are vastly superior to all diesel engined vehicles.

What this means for employment in the transportation industry who knows as many working in the sector refuse to see any significant changes in the next 10 years. This nevertheless offers a huge opportunity for a disruptive business model so lets wait and see.

However the PWC UK Economic Outlook also estimate that transportation and storage (56%), manufacturing (46%) and wholesale and retail (44%) have the highest risk of automation the overall UK economy has a 30% risk of jobs being automated.

This compares very favourably with Germany 35% and the US 38%.

Human Qualities

Some of this discrepancy between the various reports can be explained by the unique qualities that we as humans have.

The reports are generally in agreement that the following are the human qualities that are the areas that machines will have difficulty automating:

    • Emotional Intelligence
    • Critical thinking
    • Collaboration
    • Emotional Support
    • Original thought
    • Abstract concepts
    • Conflicting concepts
    • Persuasion

The future is also not all bleak as clearly there are many new jobs being created. The IDC sees 2.1m jobs being created in the US by technology augmenting workers in the world of CRM over the five years to 2021.

AI has the potential to make many jobs more productive and remove a lot of the mundane and boring elements of jobs.

A key conclusion worth noting is how to protect yourself from unemployment which is listed as education.

The World Economic Forum estimates that those with GCSE2 have a 46% risk of losing their jobs whilst those with degrees are only at a 12% risk.

In fact the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2016 estimates that 65% of primary school children will end up working in jobs that don’t exist yet.

Future Scenarios

Part of the reason for the variation in predictions comes form the fact that there are a number of scenarios being considered.

There is a great Infographic from Salesforce, which illustrates this:

In the first scenario they call “False Alarm” new jobs emerge slows and current jobs are displaced slowly so nothing changes much. Personally I see this as the least likely of the four options.

The second scenario called “Jobs Crisis” has current jobs being displaced quickly creating unemployment and due to inertia, public sector intervention, private automation tax and heavy resistance to new technology new jobs are created slowly.

In the scenario called “New Economy” current jobs are displaced quickly and new jobs are created quickly. We would need to invest in training and retraining. For some this is exciting and dynamic but for many this would be too chaotic and could be very difficult for large parts of our society to cope with emotionally. This scenario if too rapid could see violent responses from some sections as well as huge increase in mental health issues for society.

The final scenarios “Labour Shortage” characterised by investment in training would see new roles created fast but traditional jobs displaced slowly. This would impact UK economic growth and could be catastrophic in the long run on our global competitiveness.

Personally I believe “Labour Shortage” and “New Economy” are the most likely scenarios and believe we will spend time potentially in both of these over the next 10-15 years.

Impact on Recruitment Process

As well as the sectors in which we supply and operate all this new technology will also impact the process of recruitment itself.

Source – Taken from REC – Future of Jobs

  • AI – Will Increasingly be used to identify and sift candidates, for screening, compliance and skill verification
  • Video Interviewing – Will become common as it removes geographic boundaries and speeds up the process
  • Collaborative hiring – Tools to enable individuals to collaborate objectively in the process whilst operating in different geographic locations and time zones will become common, particularly amongst multi-nationals.
  • Gamification – Technology to enable candidate testing during process
  • New Resourcing Platforms – New ways of working to deliver efficiencies

All of these process changes and more will increasingly be used in the next 10-15 years. In many cases they will require high levels of capital investment taking them out of range of the SME Niche and Generalist Recruiters further adding ammunition to the armoury of the large MSP/RPO Recruiters enabling them to further penetrate the large corporate markets and drive down costs and increase profits.

In addition large corporates may choose to use these tools to insource these large contracts and deliver the efficiencies back into their own businesses.

The Consequences for future of recruitment

Threats to the future of your Recruitment Agency

If we reflect on the evidence that has been presented so far what we can conclude is that as well as destroying traditional job roles and job families the new technology will create new job roles and new job families of jobs.

As we have seen large numbers of roles are likely to disappear in transportation, manufacturing and wholesale/retail sectors. In addition some of the professional sectors will see many menial and semi-skilled roles automated. A lot of these roles will be the creation and preparation of data.

At the same time jobs will be created in health and social care sectors, education as well as highly skilled roles in the high tech, scientific, technical and professional sectors. Many of the professional, technical and scientific roles will be in the interpretation of data where there is often no clear right or wrong answer and it requires a careful balance.

The “Job-Crisis Scenario” discussed above presents a huge threat to recruitment agency businesses large or small with traditional jobs displaced quickly and new jobs created slowly. In this case we would see large-scale unemployment, which would be good for no one or any economy.

Another threat for many agencies would be huge market disruption that prevented consultants tracking where the skills-gaps were or being able to service them. It would also prevent employers businesses being able to plan and predict their future and would make recruitment highly volatile and uncertain which in turn would disrupt growth and economic expansion.

A highly dynamic situation where skills-gaps were created and disappeared too quickly would make the conditions almost impossible for niche consultants to develop their skills and deliver a high quality and reliable service to employers.

Finally another threat to all recruitment agencies would be if the dynamic changes disrupted long-standing customer relationships removing continuity and allowing their competitors to move in.

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Opportunities in the future for your Recruitment Agency

In the opposite scenario “Labour Shortage”, where new jobs emerge quickly and current jobs are displaced slowly the opportunities for niche agencies to benefit will be huge. Significant opportunities would also exist for generalist or Managed Service Recruiters as well.

Also The “New Economy” scenarios would also create sizeable opportunities for recruitment agencies to thrive through servicing their clients needs by continuing to leverage their skills and expertise either as a niche recruiter, generalist or Managed Service Recruiter.

In-house recruiters in both scenarios would have a key role to play.

In situations where these skills gaps are created rapidly then highly skilled expert recruiters who know their niches well or have strategies to recruit at volume should prosper.

Such a dynamic market is likely to create situations where agencies with less agility or expertise could see their customer relationships disrupted or lost to agencies that are better able to respond to the rapidly changing market conditions.

It proffers the opportunities for some agencies, (niche, generalist or MSP/RPO) to strike up Strategic Partnerships with some employers who seek continuity of service and supply.

Finally it also creates a huge opportunity for all agencies to offer consultancy to employers on how to create new roles that can easily be resourced and build resilient resourcing strategies that help businesses deliver ambitious growth plans.

It does call for a different type of selling however. Agencies will need to learn “consultancy sales” skills as well as strategic relationship sales skills.

It may require different sales professionals to the ones currently employed by some agencies which some might find extremely challenging.

Conclusion

No one knows what will actually happen and to a degree there is still time for us to avoid many of these pitfalls and maximise the opportunities that this new industrial revolution will create for us as the recruitment community as well as society as a whole.

One thing however is certain and in the words of Bob Dylan,

The times they are a changing.

As recruitment agency owners, directors and talent leaders one thing you would be wise to do is not ignore what is happening and wait for the future to become clearer before acting.

The reason….because it may never be clear.

We are moving into a world of constant and dynamic change.

My advice to all our clients is monitor, observe and where you feel there is a clear shift respond to opportunities or mitigate any risks to your business.

This may mean:

  • Diversify your niche sectors.
  • Move form being a local generalist to being more niche focused.
  • Recruit consultants who are more responsive to their clients and the market.
  • Seek out employees that are more flexible and innovative.
  • Build resilient client relationships.
  • Review your business operating model.
  • Reduce your office network.
  • Change your CRM/Mid-office technology platform.
  • Review your consultant recruitment and training strategy.

It may also mean in the medium term moving away form sectors such as:

  • Logistics
  • Warehousing
  • Manufacturing
  • Low/semi skilled temps

It could mean exploring sectors such as:

  • Hi-Tech
  • Health and Social Care
  • Education
  • Technical/Professional

The recruitment agencies that thrive and prosper in the next 15-20 years and therefore the entrepreneurs who go on to succeed will be the “fittest”.