As we start cleaning up our October decorations, pre-ordering our turkeys, and preparing for yet another busy holiday season, the time has come to think about 2023. As we’re brainstorming our new action plans to improve our recruiting processes and hiring efforts, which recruiting strategies should we prepare for, think about, and put into focus before the new year gets here?  

Here are 2023’s top 3 recruiting trends to pay attention to: 

1 – The rising importance of internal mobility  

The pandemic fundamentally transformed the way we think about career growth. It also fundamentally shifted the skills that we desperately needed within our organizations. Reskilling, upskilling, and career trajectory have dominated conversations in 2022. 

At this year’s HR Technology Conference, analyst Josh Bersin, described talent intelligence as being interconnected to these four things: Recruiting, Retaining, Reskilling, and Redesigning.  

According to Josh’s data, it can cost up to six times as much to hire externally rather than build talent from within an organization.  

Getting the right people into our organizations is essential, but retaining them is what’s going to grow our organizations forward. And talent acquisition leaders who focus on reskilling, upskilling, and mapping career growth timelines for internal mobility will be the ones who retain top talent.  

In many cases, companies will use talent analytics and workforce planning to determine which new roles are needed to futureproof the business and which employees might be a good fit for those roles. 

“Going forward, employers should boost their internal mobility effort by focusing more on the talent development of their workforce – offering regular trainings and certifications programs to reskill or upskill internal candidates. Experts say that investing in internal mobility will not only help organizations to attract top talent and develop more diverse pipelines, but also to fill open roles and critical skills gaps and stalled hiring”, says leading global consulting firm, Korn Ferry.  

Sourcing new talent via job boards and other top-tier hiring channels is still central to any successful modern recruitment strategy, but the pandemic has prioritized a new need in internal mobility. 

2 – Data-driven recruiting remains critical  

In 2021, U.S.-based companies fell short of their hiring goals by 50%. This is due to several reasons including the talent shortage, tighter budgets for technology, and simply not incorporating a data-driven recruiting strategy. 

According to ATS leader, Lever, the talent organizations that don’t embrace data in 2023 (and moving forward) will continue to have difficulty in sourcing talent, nurturing job seekers, and hiring the top candidates in an efficient, predictable manner. Consistent, data-driven talent acquisition and recruiting strategies will become table stakes.  

As more and more data is being revealed and predicted before the new year, take a look at the data you have right now. What can you do with it? What story is it telling? What priorities can you determine from its results?  

Use what you know now about your own employee data, recruiting wins this year, and the skills gaps you’re looking to fill to drive your talent mapping strategies in 2023.  

3 – Job boards will still lead the way  

The pandemic is still impacting how our organizations are running, including increased turnover, new demands for flexibility, and an accelerated reliance on technology. But, what will remain reliable and steady in 2023? 

According to iHire’s 4th Annual State of Online Recruiting Report, 60% of employers surveyed said they have increased their reliance on job boards in the past year, and 70% use them for “most” or “all” of their hiring. And among job seekers, 60% searched for work through a job board in the past year, while 66% said they’d go to a job board first if they needed to find work immediately.  

Job boards aren’t going anywhere. The key is to start getting creative with how you’re using them.  

Final thoughts 

There are so many more recruiting trends peaking around the corner including an increased focus on employee engagement and the candidate experience, remote work being harder to find, the rise of boomerang employees, and so many more.  

HR is changing. People are changing. And how they work together for a greater impact is going to transform even more in 2023. 

Let’s finish out 2022 strong by doing the prep work to get the candidates, jobs, and skills we need in the year to come.