I’m sure most of you are already knee-deep into all the activities that the New Year brings.   I love this season because we seem to approach our professional lives with a new sense of energy.

However, the new energy soon translates into busyness, and there’s a tendency to quickly fall into old habits.  This is especially true when it comes to recruiting.  As we work hard at “doing what we’ve always done,” it can become difficult to recognize new trends. 

However, these trends signal changes that are happening in the world around you.  Making even small tweaks to your daily activities in response to these changes can improve your effectiveness.  By ignoring trending information over time, you may turn yourself into a dinosaur. 

The hard part in this process is finding and recognizing which trends are important.  Hopefully, WorkPuzzle will be helpful in this quest.   As you might suspect, we spend a lot of time reading the recruiting press (most of it from outside the real estate industry).  On either side of the New Year there are hundreds of articles published taking stock of what happened in the previous year and making predictions for the months ahead.

As I sorted through a lot of these articles, I found one in particular that was helpful. The article was published by Chad Brooks at Business News Daily and summarizes research recently conducted by CareerBuilder.

The research was based on recent surveys of more than 2000 hiring managers and human resources professionals.  Here are some of the most interesting and relevant hiring trends for 2013:

Part-time hiring on the rise.

Seventeen percent of employers expect to recruit part-time workers over the next 12 months, up 3 percentage points over last year.  While various factors will influence this trend, 12 percent of all employers stated that they will likely hire more part-time workers in 2014 due to the Affordable Care Act.

If companies are increasingly hiring part-time employees, there are a lot of people who still want full-time positions but can’t find openings.  As we discussed in previous WorkPuzzles (1,2,3), this is a strategic opportunity for real estate companies.  You could be providing talented candidates the full-time alternative. 

There is lots of competition for sales and information technology candidates.

For those companies that are planning to add new staff, sales and technology positions are the jobs they will be trying to fill most. The research shows that 30 percent of hiring managers plan to recruit full-time, permanent employees for sales positions, while 29 percent will do the same for information technology jobs.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but looking for new agent recruits among those who are considering other sales positions will probably be unproductive.  Why?  There is too much competition for candidates.  It will be more productive to focus your candidate sourcing activities among other competencies (ex. customer service, marketing, health care, etc.)

Skills gap is widening.

Half of human resource managers surveyed said they currently have positions for which they can't find qualified candidates.  Forty-six percent said these positions go unfilled for three months or longer.

In the recruiting industry, a “skilled position” is one where a certain qualification is necessary to even be considered.  For example, not just anyone can be a Registered Nurse—a nursing degree and certain qualifications are necessary for the job. 

Real estate agent positions are unique in the sense they do not require these types of pre-defined qualifications.  Many candidates are considering “going back to school” to earn qualifications for these skilled positions.  For some of these candidates, becoming a real estate agent may be a better option—less expense and a shorter runway to a viable career and substantial income.

Companies building the perfect employee instead of waiting for one.

In light of the skills gap, 49 percent of employers plan to train people who don't have experience in their industry or field and hire them in 2014, up 10 percentage points over last year.  Twenty-six percent of employers are sending current employees back to school to get an advanced degree – and picking up all or part of the cost.

Just before Christmas, I spoke at a manager’s meeting of a major regional real estate company on the West Coast.  During the Q&A period, the CEO of this company stated, “We need to embrace the idea of ‘creating new agents’ from scratch.  This will differentiate us from our competitors and allow us to compete more successfully in the next few years.”  Maybe he’s onto something.

Companies looking for recruits in high schools.

More companies are connecting with future generations of workers to establish a pipeline of job candidates. Twenty-seven percent of hiring managers have promoted careers at their firms to high school students or, in some cases, even younger; 25 percent plan to do so in 2014.

This trend surprised me.  We’re constantly encouraging real estate hiring managers to focus on building recruiting pipelines, but I had no idea “traditional companies” were targeting the high schools to find talented candidates.  Focusing on this age group may not be the best idea for a real estate company, it does validate the importance of building a recruiting pipeline.   Successful recruiting companies know that talented individuals must be engaged and courted over a period of time.

Here’s your homework:  Based on the these important recruiting trends, what changes should you make to your day-to-day recruiting activities?  As you consider these ideas, initially think about small tweaks that are visible and measurable and then build from there. 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.