It just simply makes sense that the things that can be automated, with no discernible decrease in quality, will be. That’s what technology is for no?

What we’re largely talking about here, I think, is the attraction of active candidates. I’m not so sure that the wooing of passive candidates (despite what you may think of that concept) can be automated in the same way. This to me fits into the relationship building, relationship maintenance part of the future scenario you paint.

We’re already at a point where sourcing has gotten easy. Easy because people are smarter about how to source, but also because a larger portion of the general populous live their lives in a way makes them very findable. I’m encountering this now in daily workload, its not the finding that’s hard, its finding the right ones that is the challenge. Said another way, the filtering.

I think the role of communities is going to be as much about helping people filter out of the application process as it is to filter in. Two sides of the same coin I guess. We’ve just never had to consider the “filter out” side. But again, this focuses on the attraction side of the picture to those looking.

Its funny, recruiting used to be a lot more about being a relationship development expert didn’t it? Its almost like technology has distracted us across the decades from continuing to develop that capability. I wonder, will there be enough benefit on the back end to justify the ~30 year distraction? I believe so. The benefits are seen in the removal of anything that’s an obstacle to the right fit. Be they time, geography, or awareness.

As it stands the main obstacle to developing good relationships with top talent is mostly good relationship building skills. One of the few things that won’t be supplanted by technology.

The hard part we have in forecasting the disruption is that we know the process too well. The new way will be much cheaper and candidates and hiring managers will do more work, not less. We have a hard time seeing the vulnerabilities because we know too much.

It’s easier to look across the aisle at HR and imagine that much of the administrivia will be self administered and outsourced. New employees are going to arrive for onboarding with a full complement of benefit and compensation materials that they carry from their last job. The core data, which already really belongs to them is about to become their responsibility to manage.

Except for training and a wee bit of OD, HR is going away fast. Think bank tellers, reporters, record company executives, secretaries, humans answering the phone, ad sales people and buggy whip manufacturers (oops I almost said auto execs).

The only thing that vaguely resembles job security is the willingness to see the friction that creates your job and try to beat technology at the task of disintermediation. That means, find out why you ought to be declared redundant.

I’m not sure who’s going to burn you at the stake.I hope to encourage you to be more agressive in your forecast.

In the last 10 years the only real shift I have seen in recruiting is one where candidates can now find a broad array of opportunities on the web, and in turn a broad array of candidates can be found on the web. Besides, that any change has been incremental steps in some areas but no universal ground swell in a sea of change for our industry.

So what could be a dramatic a shift in our industry that equals or surpasses the last big change? I think the next big paradigm shift will be the middle man/woman gets removed out of the recruiting equation. Who are the middle men/woman…………we are!

If you look at most source of hire metrics (CareerXroads, HCI, etc) you will find that about 80% of hires actually come from the active channels (candidates that come to you – Careers web site, Job Postings, etc).

Technology innovation is moving at such a rapid pace with advancements in our industry that we will soon (next 5 years maybe) have the ability for hiring managers be able to receive a shortlist of names that meet the key requirements of their open opportunities based on technology solutions and filters (ability to stack rank candidates based of skill/need/want match). In turn, candidates will be able to receive a targeted list of opportunities that meet their needs based of a higher level of transparency companies provide around (benefits, culture, flexibility, career path, etc). We are already starting to see elements of these solutions right now with feeds and alerts for candidates sent to their inbox/Cell phone/etc. Some ATS and CRM solutions and their product road maps help provide a level of depth around the skills and competencies required to help automate the short list of candidates that a hiring manager is most interested in. Once these two technologies more effectively converge, we will see a shift to a similar approach we see on Ebay and Google where both buyers and sellers are brought together on a cohesive platform.

I am not saying all recruiters are dinosaurs but I believe there will be less of us, and the ones that do remain, will become more relationship development managers who focus their time on community development, outreach and building relationships with key talent ahead of demand (akin to Business Development).

The day a candidate can go online and put in their key requirements into a search on what will make them think about a career move based upon their skills, competencies and inertest, and in turn a hiring manager can run a search against candidates (and potentially bio’s of people outside the ATS, like LinkedIn, etc) that meet their required needs as well, then the last step in the paradigm shift is a mutually beneficial arrangement that does not require a recruiter to play a part in this specific part of the process. But until a time comes where technology can more effectively gauge the requirements and interest of both Company and candidates, then this shift is some time off.

Before you throw stones or burn me at the stake if you must, pause for a moment and ask yourself the question, if technology could effectively perform this function, could science fiction become reality freeing up a large part of our time to become relationship development experts?

My experience is that conventional wisdom is simply the former and rarely the latter.