10 Modern Job Search Trends to Navigate Now
Let’s talk about job trends. Don’t feel like reading? Listen here!
Most people want an easy online tool to search for jobs, apply, interview, and onboard to their new company. It’s always been challenging to do the basic job search tasks, but getting a fair ROI for the time spent is harder. In 2023, many job seekers are applying to 100 or more jobs through job boards with minimum success. While the first step to start the interviewing process is applying for jobs, it is erroneously the only thing many do.
It’s essential to know these job search trends. Not only to understand how to get the attention of people who can connect you with opportunities but also to compete in a tight job marketplace where others use strategies and tools applicable to hiring authorities. The speculation of AI taking jobs and replacing humans is dominating news feeds and is trending upward. It is becoming clearer: Knowing how to leverage AI tools will differentiate those not using them.
Events surrounding job search dominate the attention and affect the current job search.
- Professionals who hire people in Human Resources, staffing, recruiting, and talent acquisition for a living are experiencing mass layoffs and are sharing similar stories the unemployed are telling.
- Knowledge of ChatGPT is within each person’s control to experience what it can do and learn how it can enhance your career. There are many AI tools to experiment with to determine how they will impact your life, employment, and industry.
- Employers continue pushing for their workforce to return to the office, with some trying a hybrid model.
- Unemployment continues to be low, considering the mass layoff announced in the last few months.
Below are a few of the job search trends you should consider and decide if you can leverage or benefit from any of these observations or strategies:
1. Building or Participating in a Community, Not Just Networking
Most people think networking is a reciprocated connection but only a connection without building relationships. Professionals today value their time and resources, including their job, the relationships they produce, and who they refer or recommend. Make the most of opportunities to build familiarity, relationships, interaction, and an energetic networking dynamic (FRIEND).
It’s an extension of a cohort, where learning from each other is valuable and considered the new professional development through network participation. The “insider” perspective, learning through others’ experiences, and comradery enhance job seekers’ opportunities to be informed and accountable.
2. The Recruiting Mind Shift
Keirsten Greggs, a well-known talent acquisition leader, says, “Laid-off recruiters are shifting their behaviors because they are now also job seekers.”
Greggs further explains, “When they secure new employment, 1) They back off of bad/stereotypical practices 2) Become better hiring managers/part of the hiring team if they leave recruiting.” Many recruiters and staffing personnel experienced unexpected layoffs in the last nine months. One staffing leader, who has hired thousands throughout his career, shared in a conversation, “The job search is killing me,” as he was laid off twice in 2022.
Many on social networks often notice a lack of empathy from recruiters about job seekers’ harmful exploits. Greggs points out recruiters “Understanding first hand what it is to be a job seeker they become better advocates and ultimately become better recruiters.” Additionally, they, too, are human and are facing the uncertainty of the job market and experiencing anxiety about going through the interview processes of other companies.
3. Understanding How AI Tools Shape Employers’ Perception of You
Not only is it essential to know how you show up on Google, but you also need to know what or if a tool like ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, says about you, if anything at all. As Googling has become an essential tool for employers to find you (varies depending on the industry), they’ll likely use artificial intelligence queries to the same end. It may therefore be necessary to gain a more profound sense of how AI search queries depict you. They have quality annotated text data to complete all this. One thing we know for sure is: Being invisible is a disadvantage (and also, knowledge is power).
4. Think of LinkedIn as a Precious Digital Asset
While there is much value in having a website with your name as a domain, your LinkedIn profile is the first and only stop for recruiters and hiring managers. Make sure your profile is 100% completed, and you are engaged with your network.
Recruiters will mainly want to know if you have the skills for the job. When LinkedIn users convey their skills and competencies clearly and concisely, they will be noticed by recruiters and colleagues. It still ranks first on Google when people look for you online as a digital asset to your career.
5. Employers Want Your Intellectual Property
Employers want to evaluate and assess candidates to ensure they can solve problems. For years, as part of the interview process, interviewers have assigned “homework” as part of their evaluation process.
What is a growing trend is for the candidate to get ghosted by the company, recruiter, and interviewer(s) after their assignment is turned in. There are strategies to reconnect with the employer, but your ideas may be their ideas through “homework” assignments.
Most people want to work, and today’s job search is similar to a full-time job.
Only some companies pay candidates to do special projects during the interview process. It’s a way to respect someone’s time to be vetted for a position. But, it’s understandable for a candidate to be skeptical, especially if the company doesn’t traditionally request candidates complete a take-home task or assignment or provide solutions to specific problems. Job seekers should ask companies if they invite their candidates for extra work or be skeptical if it’s sprung on them during the process.
6. You Can Toggle between Employee, Consultant, and Overemployment
While it’s not the norm to leave one company for another and ask to consult with the one you left, it has become a reality.
The term “overemployment” has been introduced in the last two years but started before the pandemic when more professions became virtual. One person will hold two jobs to get ahead rather than survive. Some tech professionals simultaneously work split shifts or two daytime jobs, so evenings are free for family, friends, or hobbies.
The narrative for having a second job is not just for survival but a new way to apply in-demand skills with an entrepreneurial mindset. Companies have not abandoned the stability of full-time employees, but consider the flexibility of consultants valuable, too.
7. Answer the Interview Question, “How Did Your Solution Lead to Impact?”
Donna Svei, a Fast Company contributor, recently wrote in her article on resume trends in 2023, “In the year ahead, decision makers will want to understand the impact of any given achievement.”
While highlighting specific achievements on a resume is necessary to help a hiring manager understand your work, be sure to explain the significance and impact to stand out. Key impact indicators include overcoming HR or project-related challenges, customer satisfaction, and how a process changed output and outcomes.
8. Can You Afford to Ignore Professional Development This Year?
Every profession has quality assurance training for their industry to maintain and upgrade their tools and knowledge. While not every industry requires certifications, every professional with career aspirations must seek trends to compete in the job market.
Industry organizations and associations are among the best ways to stay abreast of job search trends and industry changes. Having a membership is just a start to benefitting from belonging. People who participate on panels, contribute to committees, and attend conferences, seminars, and webinars get inside information most members will miss out on because of their lack of participation.
In recent years, many professional development activities have been virtual, and some organizations have active and engaging local chapters for members for continued learning. Participation also provides access to announcements from industry colleagues moving to other opportunities before it’s publicly posted on job boards and sometimes internally within their company.
9. Embracing Salary Transparency Tools
It’s widely known that salary transparency is essential to balancing the inequalities of the pay gap, and there are laws in seven states to help close the gap. However, some employers publish the salary in broad ranges making it harder for a job candidate to gauge their negotiation expectations.
While it will help many job seekers to use states with transparency as a tool for negotiation, people are finding other ways to gather salary intel. Hannah Williams produces a Tik Tok series, “Salary Transparency Street,” where she asks people on the street what they do, how they got into their careers, and how much they make.
Since more people are discussing their salaries openly, your coworkers could be the best resource for current salary information. Your employer can’t do anything about it either since the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) says employees have the right to share their current salaries.
Another helpful resource is HR Dive‘s salary transparency list of states and localities, and it’s updated whenever there’s a change or addition to laws. Indeed’s job board encourages companies to publish salary requirements and job postings.
10. Is the Job Posting Real or Fake?
Companies are leaving old jobs published well after their initial posting for the job vacancy. A recent Wall Street Journal article shared a survey of 1,000 hiring managers in which a third of the respondents admitted they weren’t filling the posted job for four months (30 days in most cases). Employers have done this for years to keep the job pipeline filled and collect data to inform future talent needs, but it’s created an illusion in a job market where some industries are experiencing mass layoffs.
In both instances, it falls under jobfishing—catfish for jobs. Scammers and companies advertise non-existent jobs, collecting data applicants give unsuspectedly only to have wasted their time, and possibly their privacy becomes encroached upon.
There are companies using data to track and monitor the market. Now, when job seekers see a desired job posted, the first question many will ask is, “Is this job real?” Jobfishing is another reason to research and ask your network questions about a posted job before applying.
Level Up With Job Search Trends
There is no magic pill or one strategy to help you find a job faster. Nor should you think of your resume as a magic wand. These tips inform your decisions in your approach to finding a job. Hopefully, there are one or two of these tips you’ll use to make a difference in finding your next opportunity.
