This might sound controversial, especially coming from a major global job board, but job search today just isn’t working as well as it should. However, the future of job search looks bright and will focus more on relationship-building and efficiency.
Regardless of the current health of the job market, so many high-value jobs go unfilled, while too many highly qualified seekers go unnoticed or stay at unfulfilling jobs. Of course, much of this depends on the job or industry, as some of the most in-demand jobs (particularly in high tech) go unfilled, while other occupations (e.g. coal miners or newspaper editors) face a surplus of talent.
However, even in occupations where supply and demand are more aligned, filling a position can take weeks or months. Not only do these vacancies cost businesses billions in revenue, but the overly drawn-out recruitment process often causes top candidates to drop out and move on.
As Monster shapes the future of job search, we’ll help empower job seekers, employers, and recruiters by making the process more efficient, relationship-based, and—ultimately—rewarding for everyone involved. Here’s how.
It’s Time to Fix the Job-Matching Process
Across the recruiting industry, the job search process is generally a one-dimensional, transactional, and commoditized experience. It discounts the people involved, reducing them to a collection of catchphrases and keywords. People are much more complex than that, which is why such a reductive process leaves so much talent on the table.
It’s time to envision a new experience that begins at the intersection of:
- Personal brand
- Occupational brand
- Recruiter brand
By focusing on those three experiences, we can change the entire industry from something transactional to something transformational. After all, these three elements are at their best when they operate as a cohesive whole.
The future of job search should be more of a conscious, eyes-wide-open discovery process, where candidates, employers, and recruiters learn about each other. It should tap data and technology to connect people more directly to relevant opportunities and reduce existing gaps. Most of all, it should bring humanity back to the process.
Monster created online job search when the internet just started to go mainstream, and we’re once again in a position to break the mold. See for yourself how we plan to help seekers, recruiters, and companies present better versions of themselves.
Helping Job Seekers Find Better Opportunities
All across online job boards, job seekers’ primary method for finding opportunities is a keyword search function. Should they find something they like, they submit a resume into what is often called “the black hole.”
Hopefully, that resume is loaded with the keywords the recruiter has plugged into the applicant tracking system (ATS) to filter candidates. If not, the candidate is out of luck since the only available means for that person to position themselves as the right candidate for the job is with a one-page collection of bullet points and action verbs.
While ATS software has gotten much better at this, there are still legitimate concerns. Over-reliance on that model fails candidates and recruiters alike. It puts an onus on the job seeker to conform to technology and it gives recruiters a limited view of the seeker’s true aspirations and capabilities.
The resume documents who the candidate was, but not what they are capable of becoming. It doesn’t answer the most important question of all: How would this person fit culturally into the organization? Most jobs are won and lost on chemistry, which typically is left out of the equation at the top of the recruitment funnel.
What if a job site could provide job seekers with better matches without even having to search?
This kind of telepathy is already in play, as e-commerce sites now deliver personalized shopping experiences and recommendations based on previous purchases. Why not the same in job search? Let’s remove unnecessary steps and get you, the recruiter, more quality applications.
Candidates also need more ways to expand their personal brands in a way that will be meaningful to them and useful for recruiters. The resume is a stake in the ground (we’re already helping seekers improve it using AI with our free resume review) but we’re intent on enabling them to differentiate themselves and show how they’re right for the job.
As the recruiter, you will be able to leverage this data to find more appropriate candidates, creating a rich, symbiotic experience.
Empowering Companies to Better Promote Their Value Proposition
For employers, finding talent used to be as easy as placing a job ad on sites like Monster and on your company’s career page. That model no longer suits today’s savvy job seekers.
Millennial and Gen Z job seekers are hungry for more information. Surveys show that most candidates review company websites and a growing number of seekers read employer reviews. These job seekers want to know what it’s like to work at a company, and they’re not always finding it in the typical job description.
What if employers could create true, multi-dimensional portraits of what it’s like to work at their company?
More and more employers are investing in their employer brand as they compete for talent. Corporations now understand that to attract the best, most qualified candidates, they need to stand out. So they’ve created career sites with compelling value propositions and rich, meaningful content.
Those messages shouldn’t be constrained to just your career site, however. Employer branding should be experiential, multi-dimensional, portable, and ubiquitous. It should be everywhere: in elevators, bus stops by the office, social media, and emails to your pipeline. And, yes, on job boards and job ads.
There should also be consistent, powerful messaging that speaks directly to the potential candidate. We’re working on ways to do just that to give hiring managers and recruiters the tools to speak directly to their audience. This next-level communication will deliver incredible response rates and a great return on your investment.
Giving Recruiters What They Need to Make the Best Matches
As a recruiter, you’ve got positions to fill. Yet, with more technology at your fingertips than ever, the main tool at your disposal is still a job ad, which needs to be matched with a resume.
The process, despite the use of technology, is relatively primitive. Potentially valuable candidates are lost in the shuffle of applicant tracking systems, while great candidates find jobs elsewhere. There’s little information available to recruiters to help move a candidate from interested to hired.
No wonder it takes weeks to fill a job.
Wouldn’t it be great if you knew more about a candidate’s qualifications upfront, how qualified they were, and how to win them over?
The future of job search involves a deeper dive into the living, breathing human being behind the resume, and what motivates them. Monster will give recruiters the signals they need to analyze huge volumes of candidates via a new metric called “quality of candidate”—a pre-cursor to “quality of hire”—something most recruiters should benefit from.
Rather than vetting nameless, faceless resumes, recruiters will also have access to richer candidate profiles, using powerful AI to match these “resumes” to your job, as well as a trove of data to better understand the candidate’s priorities.
So, that’s our vision for the future: our north star. We’re hard at work here at Monster on new and updated products that we think will change job search as we know it. That’s the future of job search, and I can’t wait to see you there.
Learn About the Future of Job Search and Much More
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