Specialists in attracting talent and human resources management are increasingly aware of the growing importance that their teams have in organizations, being confident that HR contributes significantly to the business decisions at C-level, but they are also the ones who continue to struggle with lack of resources and investment in strategic projects in human resources. These are largely the conclusions of the LinkedIn annual report, Global Recruiting Trends 2017 which took into account around 4,000 talent acquisition leaders from 35 countries. Here are the main trends for next year, which the study reveals: Talent acquisition will have a prominent seat at the executive table Recruiting department has never been so present in the “spotlight” like these days. Although not directly contributing to the company’s revenue or creating products that revolutionize the market, it has contributed significantly, and highly noticed, in the company’s success. Over 83% of the global recruitment leaders who participated in the LinkedIn study said that talent is the number one priority in the organization and the team to which they belong has regular meetings with members of the C-suite. Moreover, 75% of respondents believe that their team is the key to efficient planning of human resources. Recruiters will be even busier, seeking mostly sales, operations and engineering specialists The growing importance of recruitment department translates of course, into more responsibility. Therefore, most respondents to the survey (56%) expect to hire more people next year. As companies worldwide will need more and more specialists in sales, operations and engineering, the recruitment teams should focus on a strategic approach to the procedures for identifying and attracting talent. Here, the first step is to determine, by analyzing the data of where talent supply is greater than demand. Another successful tactic is targeting all potential candidates through dedicated employer branding content, with a strong component of customization. The best sources for hires will be referrals, job boards and social networks When it comes to attracting the most suitable candidates, nearly half of recruiters say that referral programs are the number one source of employment. This is not surprising, given that such candidates are recruited faster, perform better than others and stay longer in the company. Other sources that will be reflected in next year’s strategy of attracting talent are so-called job boards such as, in Romania, recruiting platforms like eJobs.ro, BestJobs.ro or Hipo.ro, and professional social networks such as LinkedIn. Budgets still go to traditional tactics, although employer branding is in everyone’s minds It’s always interesting to observe how other teams are spending their recruiting budgets, and this year is the first time we have access to such data. Apparently, because of the fact that recruiting budgets are so limited, industry leaders tend to spend it on traditional instruments. More than 50% of expenditures are targeted to job ads and recruitment agencies, while 17% of the budget goes to new technologies that enable HR teams to automate their workflow. Thus, although recruiters say that referral programs is the most reliable source for valuable new employees, very little money is allocated in the development of this practice. The same happens with employer branding – described as one of the most important trends of the moment, but it is the last place when it comes to investing money. One of the most interesting questions answered by LinkedIn study participants was “Where would you invest, if you had unlimited budget?”. At this point, 53% of the HR leaders said they would prioritize investments in strategic areas in the long term, such as employer branding, 39% stated technology, 38% mentioned solutions that help at easier identification of candidates and 29% put on the first place upskilling their teams. Diversity, automating the selection of candidates and Big Data – key trends for the future Given the rising demand for recruitment, an increase which is not always proportional with recruitment teams development, the idea of automation is on everyone’s lips among specialists in the HR industry. Automation would significantly increase the selection speed in the first phase of the recruitment process and would help at assessing skills more precisely. Also, many companies are interested in diversity initiatives that differentiate them from competitors and at the same time they want to increase the employees’ engagement. Moreover, the LinkedIn report also reveals that large corporations mostly focus on Big Data when it comes to human resources management.