It’s the end of the year, and while some folks have already done a year in review, oth­ers are look­ing ahead – oth­ers being ‘me’. Yes, the end of the year is mere­ly sym­bol­ic, and a ‘year’ is a con­struct we place on what is real­ly an ongo­ing, nev­erend­ing process. Hmm. Maybe too much eggnog for break­fast! Yet I promise you that at least a few of these pre­dic­tions will come true – which is enough to get me a mete­o­rol­o­gist job at the local TV sta­tion. Let’s go!:

• It’s going to get hot­ter: Yes, the earth­’s atmos­phere is get­ting hot­ter – and 2020 is going to bring more of the same. Sor­ry, folks.
• Some pro­gram­mat­ic com­pa­ny is gonna get bought: Pro­gram­mat­ic is hot – just ask App­cast, Click­IQ, and Peren­go! Yet there are still some pro­gram­mat­ic play­ers who haven’t been bought yet. I’d say odds are good that at least one will get snapped up in the com­ing year.
• Job boards will keep thriv­ing: Yep, despite the very use­less moniker of ‘job board’, these recruit­ing ser­vices will con­tin­ue to grow. As I often point out, the job board biz is a glob­al biz, reach­ing into every nook and cran­ny in every coun­try. I don’t think 2020 is the year they ‘die’.
• Hands-on is pop­u­lar again: ‘Curat­ed’ has been beat­en into the ground – yet I con­tin­ue to see sites like Hired doing very well by pro­vide a more ‘hands-on’ recruit­ing ser­vice for their cus­tomers. Espe­cial­ly in a tight labor mar­ket, employ­ers are look­ing for help wher­ev­er they can find it – and if a ‘curat­ed tal­ent site’ can get them the right can­di­dates, then so be it.
• I know what you did at work: Ever more con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing of employ­ees seems to be a trend – whether it’s a good one or not. Ver­sions of retroac­tive mon­i­tor­ing are being applied to can­di­dates as well – employ­ers frame it as get­ting a ‘360 degree view’ of the can­di­date, but I sus­pect it’s more CYA. As devices get small­er and cheap­er, and peo­ple become more will­ing to be mon­i­tored, this trend will grow.
• Indeed gets too big: This is real­ly a guess, but…Indeed has start­ed to run up against the edges of its own ‘big­ness’. In many mar­kets, its pen­e­tra­tion is extreme­ly high and I sus­pect it is reach­ing the lim­its of how much PPC it can sell. Thus Indeed Prime (Seen?). Resumes. ATS. Expect to see more prod­ucts to roll out. Expect to see Indeed look more and more indis­tin­guish­able from any oth­er large gen­er­al­ist job board. Expect Indeed to con­tin­ue to make boat­loads of mon­ey.
• Face­book makes its move!: Ha ha! Just kid­ding. I’ve got­ten tired of pre­dict­ing when Face­book will make its ‘big move’ in SMB recruit­ing.
• Google does…something: When you’re big – REALLY big – you have lots of options. Maybe too many options. Google’s var­i­ous recruit­ing ini­tia­tives have been con­fus­ing this year. Hire bit the dust, of course, even though it seemed to have an audi­ence that liked it. Google for Jobs kept rolling out to new mar­kets. Google’s search prod­uct kept pop­ping up in var­i­ous job board and employ­er sites. But the over­all effect was less ‘wow, they’re real­ly tak­ing over recruit­ing!’, and more ‘are they still doing stuff?’. We expect some­thing flashier from the world’s biggest search mon­ster!
• Video makes its move!: Ha ha! Just kid­ding. Video has been promis­ing to make its move for a decade. Maybe 2020 will be the charm. I’m not hold­ing my breath.
• AI is the new black: I’ll go out on a limb here – 2020 will be the year when ‘AI’ is less a mar­ket­ing term and instead becomes part and par­cel of the rework­ing of many basic recruit­ing func­tions offered by job boards. I mean, why not? It’s final­ly (some­what) cheap, the shine has worn off enough that we can real­ly get a feel for how it might work, and it can – in some cas­es – deliv­er real ben­e­fit.

What are your pre­dic­tions? Tell me! They’ve got to be bet­ter than mine!

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