2023 recruitment technology (rectech) predictions

2022 was a momentous year for technology in recruitment and screening. The replacement of COVID adjusted right to work checks with Digital ID has been a major change for the recruitment process, offering a faster, more secure way to fulfil to legal obligations and mitigate risk within the workforce.

This has accelerated the innovation of new technology to further digitalise and streamline the recruitment and screening process, while also improving the security of candidates and employers, increasing accuracy, and strengthening the candidate experience.

Here are our top rectech predictions for the coming year.

Faster onboarding

With the constant acceleration of our lives in general, candidates and employers are expecting and striving for faster processes in recruitment. This is driven too by the rise in flexible and fast-moving work models like those found in the gig economy, where candidates are expected to start work instantly, and are only employed for a limited period before moving on to the next position.

2022 saw more recruiters using AI and machine learning to streamline certain tasks within the process, such as sifting applications, scheduling interviews, and managing communication with candidates.

AI can also minimise the effects of unconscious bias in recruitment, as each application is dealt with in exactly the same way as dictated by the machine learning programming.

This is a double-edged sword, however, as while it means that human error or bias plays no part in the screening process, it also means that more complex situations or applicants with non-standard experience or qualifications may be treated unfairly by a machine learning programme.

While these are legitimate concerns, we predict that the use of AI in 2023 will become even more widespread, as recruitment times are cut down and processes made more efficient.

Digital Referencing

Already well and truly into development, including our creation - Digital Careers, we predict that the widespread use of referencing solutions will begin to pick up pace in 2023.

Research conducted by Reed Screening showed that 64% of employers said that referencing was the biggest part of the hiring process that now needed to be modernised.

We ran a survey of over 100,000 employment references and found that just 61% were ever returned, and only about half of these were processed without any issues.

To improve this process, we have assembled a team of technical experts to build a solution using payroll and open banking data. The vast majority of UK adults have their key employment data confined within either their monthly pay checks, or their financial transactions. The consent-driven process allows users to share this data on a single-use basis. That data is then used to determine when and where they worked and can be shared instantly with any party privy to their employment verification. This API-driven solution is already returning data that used to take days to be surfaced, in seconds.

In 2022, we invited our candidates to use Digital Careers to measure the effectiveness of the system, and the high-level results were a resounding success: 43% of requests completed within three hours and 70% were done within a day.

This shows promising first steps towards overhauling a time-consuming system, and we predict that in 2023, solutions like Digital Careers will be making waves in the rectech space.

To find out more about Digital Careers, read our blog on the findings from our launch.

Digital Credentials

Qualification fraud is a growing issue, particularly as we digitise the recruitment and hiring process. Many employers aren't meeting candidates face to face as regularly, and original documents and paper documents are often only seen online, which makes validation more challenging.

Additionally, certificates from training organisations are often print-outs, easily forged, and very challenging to validate, while it can be difficult to prove the legitimacy of training organisations, particularly those that are not providing university level qualifications.

We are seeing an increased interest in online and automatic validation of qualifications and credentials, which we predict will only grow in 2023.

The Better Hiring Institute is currently working with academics in the UK and technology platforms to identify ways of digitising qualifications, from college level, school level and training, and at the moment are performing user testing. They are working on industry standards and how it could work in terms of validating qualifications and certificates, as well as looking at running a pilot with the Scottish Government in 2023.  

To find out more about how Reed Screening can help to make your recruitment process ready for 2023, get in touch with our team