UK 
United States
2015 was the year mobile truly went mainstream. In April Google released its algorithm update in April, the so called “mobilegedon”. This had a negative impact on any employer brand that had resisted the mobile trend.
As more candidates use mobile devices for all, or part of their job search, it's essential to provide a great mobile experience.
So what can we expect the major recruitment technology trends to be in 2016? Here are 4 trends that we think could dominate the next 12 months.
Candidate Experience
Up until recently, providing a stellar candidate experience has been a nice-to-have for many employers. But as the UK reaches full employment in 2016, the battle for top talent is sure to intensify. Skilled candidates will become harder and harder to find. Providing outstanding candidate experience could be your key differentiator. Combining this need, with the rise of mobile, presents new challenges to recruitment. A simple example is the humble CV. Mobile users expect to be able to upload their CV from cloud storage services like Google Druve, Dropbox and OneDrive.
If you are concerned about your online candidate experience, get a free healthcheck at eploy.co.uk/checkmysite.
Predictive Analytics
Traditional recruitment metrics provide either am historical view (e.g. How many applications did we receive last month?) or a snapshot (e.g. How many applications are in progress right now?). Predictive Analytics help you to answer your future resourcing needs - for example: How many new candidates with the right skills will we need to add to our Talent Pools within the next three months? Many recruitment teams are already using predictive analytics, but 2016 could be the year they go mainstream.
Employer branding
2015 provided some great examples of employer branding at work. Boohoo.com, the online fashion retailer, are a great example of this. Boohoo's #WeAreUs campaign, coupled with the launch of their new careers site (careers.boohoo.com) has yielded fantastic results - reducing both time and cost of hire. The effective combination of strong employer branding and next-gen recruitment technology will continue to be a key trend in 2016.
If the UK reaches full employment in 2016, then it could be the year that employer brand becomes as important as the corporate brand. Careers sites will need to clearly convey company culture whilst providing a stellar candidate experience.
Social media
In September we reported that social media isn't yet generating the volume of applications as traditional channels. It is, however, growing rapidly and 2016 could develop into the ‘year of social’ for recruiters.
As with all trends, achieving success relies on companies investing in the training and development of the people who will use them. Social Media, Search Optimisation and Recruitment CRM are all just tools - the key trend we'd like to see develop is a commitment to training recruitment professionals to master them.
